April 20, Peggy Update: Four Doctors in Three Days

 

Peggy's first doctor's appointment was her two-week follow-up with her hip surgeon who said that the site is healing normally despite continuing pain. The final three appointments were with her internist, with an OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences University) oncologist that she had never seen before, and then I had an appointment with my podiatrist.

When Peggy told her Eugene oncologist that she had rather die than take another dose of her last chemo, he said he had nothing more to offer, and referred her to two cancer centers: OHSU  in Portland, and M.D. Anderson in Houston, and in the hope of getting her into a trial study. Her OHSU doctor pronounced her ineligible for that facility’s advanced studies, but offered to recommend her for a phase one study. Peggy declined, saying that she’s not in bad enough shape to take a drug that hasn’t been evaluated for safety. 

M.D. Anderson’s representative said that Peggy would travel to Houston to talk with a doctor there because Texas doctors can’t get paid for televisits to states in which they are unlicensed. Peggy said that she was unwilling to do this.

Even without M.D. Anderson or OHSU, we have three sources of hope: (1) That the surgeon who did her April 1, hip surgery removed all of the malignancy. We won’t know for sure until she undergoes a high resolution MRI and a CA-19-9 blood test, but unless he missed something, or a previously hidden tumor turns up, she will be cancer free; (2) Another hope lies in a new, genetically-targeted, pancreatic cancer drug called Daraxonrasib for which her OHSU oncologist said she fits the genetic profile of people for whom the drug works. We are told that the FDA should approve the drug this summer; (3) The surgeon who operated on her hip gave us yet another reason to be hopeful by suggesting that we go to a website called clinicaltrials.gov, and conduct our own searches for clinical trials. Of the many doctors we’ve had, he seems the most brilliant.

As for my health news, the back of my foot hurts so much that I’ve been walking on the front of my foot, and so it hurts too. One of the four visits I mentioned was to a podiatrist who prescribed Meloxicam, gave me exercises to do, and sent me home with an insole. Still, I limp.

People sometimes wonder whether Peggy’s illness has brought us closer… Peggy’s cancer has brought me closer by increasing my belief in her courage, optimism, and perseverance, and by exposing her fear and physical fragility, thereby proving to me that my support is essential. Peggy’s cancer has brought Peggy closer by increasing her awareness of her ever-growing strength and her knowledge that I will stand by her side no matter what. 

On the downside, trauma can so stress a relationship that a couple will come to regard the misery they feel as being inseparable from their togetherness. This is why illness, natural disaster, or the death of a child, often ends in divorce. After 55-years together, I don’t see us divorcing no matter what, yet we are not unscathed by having endured nearly a year of ongoing trauma. 

It’s all so sad, all so wearisome, this being repeatedly yo-yoed up by hope only to be dashed onto the pavement by disappointment, and added to it is Peggy’s ever worsening pain. She has long been better than I at thinking positively, but now that her war against cancer is nearing its second year, her battle against despair has become grimmer, and it is I who try to cheer her, usually to no avail. We are together almost always, and sometimes it seems like too much, but I remind myself that she might die soon, and that I must cherish our togetherness. Perhaps, it’s true of most men—and women—that one of the things we love most about our partners are glimpses of the bright-eyed children that they used to be, but those glimpses have become less frequent now that the reality of suffering and the anticipation of death occupy so much of our awareness. Like metal that’s being abraded into filings, there remains less of us at the end of every day.

Men might be more likely than women to risk their lives for endangered loved-ones, but it’s women who dominate the ranks of caregivers, which is why sites like Reddit are filled with the accounts of embittered women whose husbands unhesitatingly abandoned them in their hour of greatest need. 

Another noteworthy gender difference is that aged men are more likely than aged women to die within months of their spouses. Young men glory in their greater muscle strength, and interpret it to mean that women are the weaker sex in every way. Then comes old age and the thought that this might not be so.