cancer | Sarge-Central

Hi, this is Carol Anne. It’s time for a long overdue update! There is a bunch of news here, so take your time.

The good news is: I am now done chemotherapy treatments and they seem to have successfully kept the tumor from progressing!

Back in March I was experiencing neuropathy in my right foot. At that point we dropped the Vincristine part of my chemo treatment (the ‘V’ in the PVC treatment) but continued with the P-C pill-based drugs. April 22^nd I met in person with my medical oncologist who was surprised at how well I looked and how well I was doing. I was in really good shape, so we decided to continue with round five of chemo. Three rounds is what most of the studies are based on; four is the desired standard; and five was a bonus! However, six has been cancelled.

Ten days later, during round five of chemo, I had a seizure. It took me three days to ‘recover,’ but it has all but grounded me. Thanks to Diane and Saanich recreation I am back in my twice a week exercise class. I am keeping my core strong and I continue to build torso strength and maintain my balance. But I am no longer riding my bike and I am not allowed to drive, so I am dependent on others for rides everywhere. This lack of independence sucks.

The Provincial Tumor Board met on Friday where my case was discussed. Aside from the pathologist being all excited about my pathology report, the result has not changed: it’s still an oligodendroglioma, so we’ve picked the right treatment and for the most part it’s been working.

MRI Updates: I had my first post radiation MRI in December. It showed two areas of new intracranial mass. The next MRI in February showed the same. We repeated the MRI in May, but had a fancy perfusion MRI which can differentiate between radiation necrosis and new growth. The May 4^th MRI was taken to the provincial tumour board for review. (We just got an update this week which is why this update is so delayed as we wanted more information.)

The tumor board has confirmed, and everyone around it was an agreement, that the two new masses are radiation necrosis, not tumour growth. To the chemo people this is good news because it means their treatment worked and the problem is with radiation, so the radiation folks have to fix it. I have an appointment with my radiation oncologist this coming Thursday June 12^th.

The challenge of radiation necrosis is that it is two masses in my right temporal lobe which are causing all sorts of symptoms. These masses are probably what triggered the seizure, and all the symptoms I had before my surgery are back and worse. I’m losing my sense of balance. My energy levels are exceptionally low. My memory and thought processing is compromised. The depression is back, and my ability to plan and make rational decisions is compromised. I have a pronounced tremor. At this point I am on steroids in the hopes that this will reduce the swelling of these masses and improve my symptoms. In the meantime, I am very dependent on the kindness of others in my family to feed myself get myself around and make all decisions.

Hello family and friends! We have been overdue for a public update on all things Sargent, so I thought I’d stop and write something out. Some of you will already have some (or all) of this news, but others of you we haven’t had a chance to catch up with yet.

Carol Anne is in the midst of her fourth cycle of chemotherapy. This cycle is a little bit different for her, as she is no longer starting and finishing the cycle with Vincristine. Her oncologist, after reviewing her progress, identified that she is experiencing more side effects (largely neuropathy?) that benefits from that drug; the literature suggests that the treatment is not significantly less effective without it, so it has been dropped for the remainder of her treatments, much to Carol Anne’s delight.

Additionally, she has now had two MRIs since finishing radiation treatments. The scans still aren’t pretty, and we do not yet have definitive evidence of tumor regression <sigh> so there is another MRI planned for the near future. What it has been showing is what the oncologists and surgeon are pretty sure is “pseudo-progression.” Carol Anne’s research suggests that this would be a good sign, as it is evidence that the brain is responding to the treatment the way it is supposed to, so we are holding on to that optimism until we have a reason not to.

Other than that, Carol Anne is continuing to handle the chemo treatments pretty well, fatigue notwithstanding. However, she is getting bored and she misses people. Please feel free to come visit!

As spring promises that it will make its presence known, our small pride of cats is getting more and more anxious to be outside! To this end, we have procured and assembled a kitten coop for the front yard! It is still very sparse, but we have plans to fill it with various levels and obstacles for them to play on while they watch birds and insects in the garden. If you have ideas, or if you’d like to contribute some materials, please let me know! The Twins will very much appreciate it.

Speaking of the Twins, they are much larger than they used to be!

(Chai wants you to admire her new haircut)

I am stepping back into the world of paid work! I have sent out a number of applications to teaching jobs in the past month, and I have also started talking with some folks about various bits of teaching work (some of which I am already doing!) I am very happy to be teaching again, even if it is still just in small amounts. I have missed (almost) everything about it a great deal (not the report card bit, though. Happy to not be doing that!)

I am also sending my novel around to various readers for feedback! Yes, I completed a novel at the beginning of the year – just a simple little mystery-style novel. It is the first of a series of novels that I have planned out. Over the course of writing and developing it I decided that I wanted this book to be very accessible. By this I mean that I have set out to write and lay out the novel to make it more accessible for readers who have challenges with text that aren’t traditionally recognized or accommodated. Specifically, I am trying to make the book more accessible for ADHD, dyslexic, and autistic readers, as well as readers who have difficulty reading for long periods of time at a sitting. .

To this end, I have employed fonts that are designed to be more easily read by those who have challenges with traditional fonts. I have also taken the detective-noir convention of the ‘overly-self-aware’ narrator and leaned into it so that questions of intent, sub-text, and meaning are more clear and explicit. And finally, I have used extensive dialogue and frequent paragraph and chapter breaks to make the layout easier, to make it easier to take breaks, and to make it easier to keep track of characters and story points.

I am hoping to be able to compile the feedback, make any last edits necessary, and send it out to agents and publishers before my birthday this year – a little 50th birthday present to myself.

If you are interested in being an early reader and providing me with feedback, please let me know and I will share a copy of the book (digitally) and a list of questions I’m looking for feedback on!

Finally – Weddings! There are two weddings in the family coming up quickly.

My second-born child Nathan and his fiancee Zoe are getting married at the end of May in Ottawa. Myself, Martin and Zamira, and Kathleen and Matthew will all be there. (The schedule for the week doesn’t work for Carol Anne, who will still be finishing chemo treatments at that point so she’ll spend some time in Toronto with her sister instead.)

And – our niece Sarah and her fiance Ben are also getting married this summer, and we will all be traveling to the interior for that as well! Lots of travel and family coming up and we are looking forward to all of it.

Phew! Okay, that’s the quick and dirty update!

We love you all and we look forward to seeing you soon!

An Update from Carol Anne

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