Cancer Picked the Wrong Butt

After complaining to our friend, Jackie, at 12:45 p.m. about feeling like we were being put off regarding Bear's IV chemo port placement, we are now set for launch in less than a week! THAT IS CRAZY!!! With the holidays, they had said it would be "several weeks" after finishing oral chemo, which was frustrating. Oral chemo ends December 5 and having to wait till January felt scary. We are ECSTATIC it has been moved up!  The downside is that Mallory and Elisabeth will be arriving in the wee hours of the morning the port goes in. I feel guilty because we miss them sooooo much, their time here is so short, and this will take time away from them. But it just doesn't make sense to put it off literally more than a month. Bear says he is a trooper and will bounce right back to hang with us. Fingers crossed he's right!!! Anxiety has already kicked in about all that needs to be done before then. The house is a mess, the yard is a wreck, everyone is coming into town next we...

I feel like half of my journal entry titles are along the lines of: "Time flies!" "Haven't written in a while!" "Where does the time go?!"  But truly! I think of journaling probably every day, but am always so busy and distracted. Then, when I come here to post and see the last entry was October 25th... That's almost three weeks ago!!! What in the WHAT?!  I am having a heavy cancer day today. I'm not sure I can adequately articulate why or if I even actually KNOW why... We are SO fortunate Bear has not yet experienced any side effects AT ALL! Last week, the doctors were literally SHOCKED he was still working. Dr. Lin even faked kind of falling/jumping out of his chair towards us, so you can imagine the reaction a week later! We know chemo and radiation can both take some time to build up, but to be on day 13 of treatment without even the slightest twinge of pain or nausea or irritation is nothing short of a miracle, especially with his DPD diag...

It's crazy to think it's barely been a week since I last wrote anything, because it feels again like I've lived a lifetime since then. I still need to catch up on telling Norah and Ryan, my parents, and then the awful task of telling all of the kids.  Today was an early and crazy day of soccer games for Natalie, Cubby, and Ike, then volleyball for Nat. Siobán surprised us by taking a train down from UCLA yesterday, spending six hours on public transportation, and having Lydia pick her up from the train depot. It was a lovely surprise for Bear after such a crappy week.  We also spent last night with our friends, the Perrys. Michelle needed to carve a bunch of pumpkins for our school's Fall Festival being held today, so she said we could come over after school, she'd feed us pizza, and the kids could do the dirty work, haha. I had said we'd bring drinks or dessert or something, but when they found out about Bear's diagnosis, they insisted we just bring ourselv...

Bear had his "mapping" done today to prepare for radiation. It was an 8AM appointment and I had planned to take the little kids to before school care so I could meet Berek at the cancer center. One of the hard parts about not having told anyone anything yet is the lack of understanding or grace in certain situations. Our kids NEVER go to daycare and didn't want to wake up super early to just sit at the school for an hour, and I didn't have a really great reason as to why they'd have to, so they pushed back about it. Needless to say, I didn't make it to the appointment in time (especially because it only took 20 minutes!) and I was crushed to not be there to support Bear, even though he said it was fine. I still continued on my route, thinking I would drive to his work and surprise him with a hug when he made it back to his office, but he mentioned something about having set up a mock crash scene for his AI class earlier this morning. I told him my plan to meet...

...and they don't stop coming. It feels like every time we accept news and adjust our mindset, the goalpost gets moved farther and farther away.  September 29 - You have colon cancer. October 4 - It's spread to your lymph nodes. October 9 - JK, it's rectal cancer, but just Stage I or Stage II. October 13 - It's actually worse than initial reports indicated, probably Stage III.  October 14 - No, really, it's even worse. Stage III-C, T3N2b.  October 15 - Oh, and it's MSS, not MSI, so it's immunotherapy-resistant, when this cancer responds well to immunotherapy.  For the love of all that is holy, can we just slow it down a bit, people?! We went from 90-95% five-year survival rate the first day to now something ridiculous like 10-15% of 30-50% of 60-70%. There are so many little factors that even the cancer survivor calculators (yes, that's a thing and yes, I use them often) can't figure the math (are we at 1.8-5.2%?! I can't tell!).  My poor, poor b...

I just picked Natalie, Cubby, and Israel  up from school. We're supposed to pick up Robert from football practice soon and then go to Lydia's flag football game, which will take about an hour in all. It's cold and drizzly outside, a nice change from the incessant 90 ° heat. I haven't been able to talk to Bear yet, since he's teaching his class. He'll be at Lydia's game to take stats, then everyone will be home afterwards. Yesterday was our 23rd wedding anniversary and we spent it with him getting a  proctoscopy in the morning and an emergency MRI in the evening. Since he had to fast, we hit up a Sonic Drive-in for burgers and drinks after the MRI, then parked at South Carlsbad State Beach (where we camp as a family each summer) to eat and watch the waves. Luckily, we're lowkey, but until Sonic, it was still an overall odd way to spend our anniversary. I haven't wanted to be away from him since we heard the news and time spent together at yesterday...

Bear went to work and I took the kids to school as per usual. Mid-morning, I drove to Bear's office to pick him up and we went to meet with a potential colorectal surgeon, Dr. Brookover. We ended up loving the doctor, who is a straight-shooter and also hilariously sarcastic. Perfect fit, ha! Bear had a proctoscopy and we couldn't stop laughing at "celebrating" our anniversary in such a way. The tools laid out didn't include the worst ones, which Doc said he didn't allow patients to see ahead of time. He confirmed the size and location of Bear's tumor and firmed up his end of the treatment plan.  While he gave us all of the options, including studies and clinical trials and the current "Watch and Wait" protocol, Dr. Brookover said Bear was too young with too many kids to do anything other than super aggressive treatment. After chemo and radiation, he will give Bear some time off to regain health and strength and then perform LAR surgery to remove ...