It all started around November, 2023, after visit to the ER to find out why I had fainted for no reason. (Spoiler…it is still unknown.) After a head CT scan it was recommended that I visit an ENT which I did, and after another head scan, was sent to the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland to be seen by the head Rhinologist.
After that visit and a biopsy of something in my nasal sinus (this name for the location has changed since then), I began four months of chemo with many trips to Portland thanks to the diligence of my daughter, Boo, who also took on the role of patient advocate. Who knew that was her forté?! She was excellent!
The other Portland and OHSU
Although the treatment was supposed to culminate in surgery after the chemo, by the end of that horrible process, the treatment was changed to Proton Radiation therapy and “just a little more chemo” only once a week for six weeks which involved a move to Seattle for two months, accompanied by caregivers that included my daughters, one granddaughter, son-in-law and all family caring about and for me, and driving me to the all the places. We stayed in a “hospitality house” for patients of the Fred Hutch Cancer Centers and the University of Washington. These organizations are going to be merged soon (or maybe they are by now) and I’m sure they understood how these two places were related, but I never really caught on. For the first month we took the light rail in Seattle and the bus just like regular city people and it was fun except for the reason to be there.
Proton Therapy is more than a concept
Graduating
November 2024
I spent the last month at Laelie’s house where I just hung out like a sick person. Am I well now? I know I’m better enough to go back to exercising and to sit at the computer for hours and I have lots of concurrent knitting and spinning projects underway. The kind of cancer they diagnosed for me is not necessarily terminal, but it is so rare that each case is its own experiment, so I’m just living through that. I have a followup MRI and doctor meeting at OHSU the day before Thanksgiving 2024, and the recovery time that I computed (based on the year I was told it would take to recover) brings the date to June of 2025.