History

Tuesday, September 11, 2007 11:37 AM CDT

CHECK OUT THE NEW PHOTOS! ABOUT TIME, HUH?

Hi, all! Things are still great! My health is excellent (other than a minor thing like cancer, of course), I've been getting a lot of horse and kitty play the last couple of weeks (including a 1.5 hour ride yesterday), and the chemo last week was non-eventful So far, at least--last time I got a mouth sore about two weeks into the four-week cycle. But if that's the worst that happens, well, life is GOOD!

My number went up a bit, from 1026 to 1210--which happens to a lot of people starting on Doxil. But the oncologist and I both believe this number means it's actually working. For one thing, the cancer I have usually grows at a rate of around 300 or more a month--and this time, the growth was halted to an increase of about 180. Second, I had a lump on my belly about the size of a walnut--either a surgical scar, or a tumor, or a combination of both--and in the last month, that's shrunk to about a fifth of its original size. Plus, as the doctor said, I feel so good. By the way, she was astounded that I helped unload hay a couple of weeks ago. I'm really blessed with a remarkably resilient body.

The oncologist said we'd go three cycles to see if Doxil actually brings the number down. That's one more than her nurse told me last month. That's a little dismaying--it gives the cancer that much longer to grow. But there aren't that many chemo choices for recurrent ovarian cancer, so I want to make sure we give this one the very best shot.

And the good news is, I'm seeing a lot of clinical trials being offered for women with recurrent ovarian cancer. The protocols on who qualifies for each trial are incredibly detailed and picky--but it gives me and my friends in my Minneapolis support group hope that if and when we run out of approved options, there will be others left for us to try. In the meantime, life is very, very good indeed.

By the way, September is national Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. It affects 1 in 57 women and is the deadliest of women's cancers. Seventy-five percent of women are diagnosed in the late stages--like me. If you have advanced cancer and recur, you have a 70 percent chance of dying in the first five years after diagnosis.

If you're a woman, please be aware of the usually subtle symptoms --bloating and change in bowel or bladder habits are most common, followed by an expanding waistline, indigestion and unusual bleeding. If you have any of these and they persist more than a week--and they're different than what you've experienced before-- please see a doctor!

And pray for all my fellow survivors and me, that we beat the odds and extend the life expectancy for this terrible disease.

Love,

Meta

Tuesday, September 4, 2007 11:51 AM CDT

What a difference a couple of weeks makes! I'm still fever-free, and I feel the best I have since late May, before I had my gallbladder out.

Virtually every activity feels like fun--and progress. Mark and I went to a movie and then to shop at Target. I was so pleased to be able do something "normal"--like walking around the store without having to sit down repeatedly and catch my breath.

In the past two weeks or so, we've been on two horseback rides--heaven! On one ride, Whitey the albino redtail hawk flew over us and landed on top of a tree with his back to us, so we could clearly see his shining white back and wings, with his red tail and red wingtips spread out. My horse Leinie, whom I have renamed Sundance in keeping with his beauty and sunny personality (see the new photos), couldn't have been better. It's difficult to believe that a scant year ago he was a high-strung, anxious show horse who had never been away from the stable. Now he trots over downed tree branches and past scary things like lawn chairs and coiled hoses (a snake! a snake!) with casual aplomb. It feels great that Mark and I have helped with his healing.

Some friends of ours came down, and we did a hike up one of our bluffs and around on the neighbor's trail, which amounts to about two miles. I was delighted to find when I got to the top of the bluff, which is very steep, that I still had lots of energy to spare; Plan A had been for me to bail out on the way up, or go back down once we reached the top if I was too tired to go on. Plus, it was just super to hang out with four of our whitewater boating friends and catch up with their lives. Thanks, Dennis and Carol and Rob and Sue, for coming down.

And Saturday we took delivery on 310 bales of sweet-smelling hay. I was one of two people (the other was our neighbor next door, who kindly volunteered) who threw the 50-pound bales down from the wagon to the guys, who stacked them up in the barn. (The cats and kittens seem to think we brought the bales in for their express benefit; they immediately climbed to the top and started investigating every cranny,and/or leaping out at each other from behind the bales.) Then it was off to Red Wing, where I picked up fried chicken and some salads to feed all who helped us haul and unload. Mary Kriese, a new friend from nearby Lake City, helped Mark cut tomatoes from our garden while her husband Tim and son Frank (young muscles and back!, plus Marv, the 60-plus bachelor farmer who grew the hay) washed up. We sat outside enjoying our picnic until long after dark.

Today, I had fully planned to ride alone this morning (Mark is out of town on business). But I overslept, and by the time I was ready it was already too hot; it's supposed to get to 90 today! So I had almost as good a time taking Sunny out into the meadow Mark has created around our yard, where my horse greedily feasted on long, succulent grasses in the shade while I brushed and loved him up. Vince, our blue-eyed, cross-eyed alpha cat, supervised from a spot about two feet away while three vultures and our resident redtail hawk circled slowly overhead.

Thursday is my next monthly chemo session. The drug I'm on is called Doxil. It has a pretty typical response rate for second-line chemotherapy of about 14-18 percent, if I'm recalling correctly. Not great, but we chose it because it is very well-tolerated and tends to have a lesser effect on most people's white cells--both of which were a major consideration while I was still dealing with random fevers.

There are two things notable about Doxil. First, much to Mark's and my surprise the first time around, it isn't transparent like the other chemo drugs I've had. It's a bright red-pink-orangey shade that reminds me of Hawaiian Punch. Mark and I watched the bright drug slowly move its way down the IV line, then cheered when it entered my body (hey, you take your fun where you find it).

The second thing about Doxil is that it isn't suspended in chemicals; rather, the drug molecules are wrapped in little fat globules, which take a while to dissolve, making the infusion less immediately toxic. Last time, I felt fine. The only side effects were that my skin felt very hot the first night, and I later got a small sore on my tongue. Mouth sores and blistered skin are Doxil's main side effects. These may or may not get worse for me as I get more treatments.

Also, because the drug is slow to act, my CA 125 may or may not go down after the first session; for about 50 percent of patients it goes down, and for the other half, it actually continues to go up. Although I'll get a CA 125 reading on Thursday, we may not know until after this second session works for a month whether Doxil is actually killing the cancer. That's a little unnerving--to potentially wait through two months of chemo while the cancer could still be growing. But if there's one thing this cancer journey has taught Mark and me it is patience.

Because my CA 125 is naturally more sensitive than most people's, I'm hoping the number has gone down-- to 700 or 800. I'll let you know on Thursday.

I was at my Chinese healer's last week when he asked what emotions I had been feeling the past week. That was easy: "Joy and gratitude," I immediately responded. Just feeling back to normal and having energy makes me feel like I have a second shot at life! It's amazing how we take our physical abilities and feeling generally healthy for granted. Plus, the fact that I feel so damned good makes me believe that the drug is working.

Well, we'll see, won't we? In the meantime, there's still sunshine, and natural beauty, and Mark and our family, and all of your support, and horses and cats to play with. Life is great right now.

I hope you all are embracing September, too.

Love to all,

Meta

Friday, August 24, 2007 2:40 PM CDT

So. Today, I'm celebrating a week since my last hospitalization. Yes,I was hospitalized AGAIN last week for three days. And it wasn't because of the chemo--which was a piece of cake, relatively speaking--it was because I was spiking a 102.5 fever. AGAIN. Because I had been taking antibiotics continuously (which should have kept any infection down), my and the doctors' fears were that the chemo had reduced my white cell count to the point where I was extremely vulnerable.

Interestingly (that's one way of looking at it, I guess), that wasn't the case; my white cell count was actually a little bit elevated. To be on the safe side, they pumped me with kickass IV antibiotics and --as long as I was there--ran some more tests looking for why I was sick. (Hepatitis, anyone?) All the tests were negative. And (good news!, the shadow on my lung had disappeared, so the antibiotics actually did something. But even with all the drugs, my fever didn't budge.

So Infectious Disease, in the form of the affable, outdoorsy Dr. Badley (my new best friend, but wouldn't you change your name?), decided that maybe whatever infection I had was gone, and that the fever was caused by the cancer. I learned that some tumors secrete proteins that act as a trigger for the body to run a fever. So away went the antibiotics, and I was dosed with 1,000 mg of Aleve a day. Success!!

So now, I'm continuing to take the Aleve instead of the antibiotic. The arthritis in my thumbs has never been so quiet! The fever should stay away, unless of course it doesn't --in which case I can return to the hospital to further mystify the oncology and Infectious Disease teams. I'm demanding a frequent visitor deal where I get a massage every day after my 10th hospitalization. No one has said "yes" to that yet, alas.

I'm feeling great--I'm less winded than I have been in the past, so I'm hopeful that this is the end of mysterious fever problems. I went to my ovarian cancer support group in Minneapolis on Wednesday (Mark drove me);yesterday we did a day trip to Northfield, a charming town with two private colleges (and the place that Jesse James was captured after robbing the bank there); and today, I went out and brushed and played with my incredibly handsome and friendly horse. Mark and I are planning on a short ride this evening, just to see how I do. I'm even contemplating going to the gym next week to start rebuildinbg all the muscles that somehow have disappeared.

I'm REALLY, REALLY looking forward to a couple of weeks of what I hope is "normal" before I get the next chemo treatment Sept. 6. I've been having fun the last few days filling the bird feeders (the hummingbirds are mobbing the sugar water inb a wird sort of ballet) and going down to visit the cats and kittens. My hope is to get a lot of riding in, help Mark with the yard work and animal chores,and get this mess cleaned off my office desk once and for all. Of course, I've been talking about cleaning my office since we moved in, so don't hold your breath.

All for now. I'll update you about the kind of chemo I'm getting, and how our weekend went, next week.

Love and blessings to all,

Meta

Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:28 AM CDT

Hi All...

Well, the roller coaster ride continues. Meta went back into the hospital two days ago with the fever. This time was different. Usually it has come back when her antibiotics run out. This time it came back while still taking the antibiotics. As of a few minutes ago (Thursday morning) her fever was 102.5 and this while being pumped with powerful intraveinous antibiotics. Everyone at Mayo seems stumped. Not for lack of tryng though. The care as you would expect with Mayo is top notch...it's just "a mystery" as they keep saying. The oncologist wants to send her home for fear she'll catch something else while in the hospital, the infectious desease specialist wants to keep her until the fever is under control.

She did get one dose of chemo, which they don't relate to the fever. They have one more thing they are going to try this afternoon...to attack it as though the cancer itself is causing the fever...which they haven't done before. In theory, if the cancer is causing the fever it would not have responded to the antibiotics previously...so we don't really know if that will work.

Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

Love to you all,

Mark

Tuesday, August 7, 2007 5:52 PM CDT

Hi again. I saw the doctor on Monday, and I�m A-OK to proceed with chemo tomorrow. My CA 125 is 1026�daunting, but not so far off the 867 number it was last fall, when I started chemo for the first recurrence. To my surprise, (I�m eating all the time) I�ve lost more weight�down to 141 from a normal 155-158. But my appetite is roaring back (I finally ate a normal-sized dinner last night), and I�ve loaded up on things like trail mix (nuts and raisins have high, healthy calories), organic fruit juices and protein bars. Oh yes, and the occasional chocolate-covered raised donut and DQ. It�s weird�for the first time in my life, I can and should eat the minute I have any sort of mild interest in doing so.

Mark and I also have a meeting with Infectious Diseases tomorrow before I start chemo. I had a chest X-ray yesterday, so we�ll find out whether there�s still some strange shadow on the bottom of my left lung. The good news is that it would be HIGHLY unusual for ovarian cancer to spread to either the lungs or the brain. It generally stays around the abdomen, sometimes going as far up as the spleen (yes, in my case), or the liver (not yet).

I've felt really good today, altho I can't say I've been running around much. That compares with yesterday, when I hit the wall at about noon (sudden nauseam dizziness and exhaustion, then recovered at around 4.

I�m psyched about getting chemo tomorrow and launching an all-out war on the cancer �including supplements recommended by highly regarded cancer nutrition books, acupuncture and meditation. Depending on how chemo goes, I�m also looking at a 5-day Buddhist retreat in Colorado at the end of this month specifically designed for cancer survivors�yoga, nutritional discussions by the head of the Andrew Weill Center for Integrative Health, discussions with a woman who�s an expert in grief and counseling hospice patients.

More after chemo tomorrow,

Meta

Saturday, August 4, 2007 7:08 PM CDT

Hey, no fever! That's not to say the infection still isn�t lingering (almost a certainty), but at least I didn't end up going to the hospital. Whew!

This is getting really, really old. Each time, the course of the fever takes about six days, during which I alternately shake with chills (fever on the way up), break out in wringing-wet sweats (fever on the way down) and sleep almost interminably. Oh, yes�and despite Mark's and my best efforts, I lose five or more pounds, and about Day 4 my bowels go on strike, which lasts about a week.

Finally, I got pissed off/discouraged enough about the whole thing to call my oncologist last week and tell her I felt like I was slipping through the cracks, and no one seemed to realize I was progressively sicker and no one seemed unduly concerned.

"Understandably, you hear that I have a fever and tell me it's not safe to do chemo," I told her. "So you send me over to Infectious Disease, and they tell me they can't find the cause, and, 'Here, take these antibiotics, and then let's see if it comes back.' And guess what? It always does come back, and I�m sick for another six days.

"Meanwhile," I told her, "I still have untreated, aggressive cancer. I'm afraid this is the best I'm ever going to feel ever again (AAUGGH!) and that I�m going to die of a mysterious infection that prevents me from having chemo, ever. Do you have any idea how increasingly sick and demoralized I am?" (Good question, I though, since she hasn�t seen me for a month.)

She made appropriately sympathetic/typically defensive remarks (most of which seemed based on the assumption that I�m all ill-informed, impatient idiot�EXCUSE ME!!!!), then said she would consult with Infectious Disease and get back to me. So here�s the game plan:

For now, I'm continuing to take antibiotics every day. This coming Wednesday, we'll take somewhat of a risk and I'll start chemo again, with Doxil. That's the one that can cause blisters on your hands and feet. The big advantages of Doxil are that it's generally very well tolerated by most people, and that it doesn't hammer your infection-fighting white cells like some others (a big plus in my case!) To manage risks, Mark and I will be watching how I'm feeling like the cats monitoring the brush pile where the rabbits hang out.

Also, Wednesday, we'll meet with Infectious Diseases and get their thoughts. The strong antibiotics mean that I'm mildly (at least) nauseated most of the time, and pretty limited in what I can eat. Thank God it's watermelon season, and that Mark makes a mean chicken rice soup! So, anyway, we'll be asking whether we can cut back a bit to something that's not quite so hard on my stomach.

Plus, it's not clear at all when I can stop taking the drugs, and how we'll know that the infection is gone. One hope is that perhaps the infection is caused by the cancer--that is, that there's been some minute perforation in my bowel wall, and that bacteria is leaking where it shouldn't. If that's the case, and if the chemo works, the infection should take care of itself. Gosh, I hope that's it!

So, anyway, lots of unanswered questions. Yesterday, Mark and I went down to Mayo to get my blood drawn, and Monday I go back to get the CA 125 cancer-marker results, have them check this annoying--and growing--hernia on my belly, and make sure that I'm OK to start chemo. It's been May since I had chemo (just one treatment out of 18), so the number is likely to be high. I'm expecting it will be up to at least 1,000, so that I won't be too dismayed when I get the results.

Much to my disappointment, I still feel weak and sickly. You know those big clown punching bags that are weighted at the bottom, how you can knock them down and they always jump right back up? Turns out, that�s not the case with humans--at least not after being sick on and off three months. I don't know why I'm surprised, but I am--and very disappointed. I did so well with the first and second rounds of chemo that I guess I just thought I was invincible. It's pretty damned discouraging, and a bit frightening.

Sometimes, I do worry that my best days are already behind me, and I may never feel any better than this. I know that's likely to the case at some point, but NOW?

Jeez, I hope not. We haven�t even lived here a year (actually, it�s a year next week) and I have yet to enjoy my first full summer here. I still have WAY too much living and playing and loving to do. Plus, I've got to be here to vote in the 2008 presidential elections!

Please keep praying and e-mailing me and Mark. Your support means a TON; you have no idea. I'll provide an update after the Monday visit.

Much love,

Meta.

Saturday, July 28, 2007 7:31 PM CDT

Hi All...

Well, I wish I had better news. Meta's fever is back. It started again last Wednesday. She called Mayo and they prescribed the antibiotic again,so we were hoping after a couple of days it would kick in and the fever would be gone again. Not the case so far. Her temp ranges from 102+ down to under 100, bouncing around during the day, but shows no sign of leaving. If it doesn't break tonight (Sat.) we'll head to Methodist Hospital in Rochester tomorrow.

I'll try to keep this updated better than we have the past two weeks or so. Thanks for your continued prayers.

Love,
Mark

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 11:56 AM CDT

Hi, all, and forgive me for my tardiness in updating you! I just read my last post, and discovered that I was supposed to restart chemo on July 9. HA! And double HA! Instead, I was in the hospital for what turned out to be a six-day (yuck) stay. The infection wiped out plans to go on a 4th of July trail ride and picnic with some neighbors, watch the fireworks from my Dad�s deck overlooking the Mississippi River, and (worst of all) miss Mark�s 40th high school anniversary in southern Iowa. I HATE what the cancer does to my life. Equally much, or perhaps more, I hate what it demands of Mark.

As it turns out, the infection I had the first time around never had been killed. With that first bout, I finished the course of antibiotics Mayo has prescribed on July 2. The afternoon of July 3, I didn�t feel great and took a long nap. My temp was up on Wednesday (yes, 4th of July), and by Friday morning it was again 103. So I called my oncologist, and we hustled back down to Mayo so I could be hospitalized and the infectious disease experts could get to the bottom of what was going on.

As it turns out, we still don�t know�despite Mayo�s best efforts, and those were mighty (and, I�ll bet, mighty expensive). Thank God, thank God, thank God, that I have really great insurance coverage. They started pumping me full of IV antibiotics and saline to fix the dehydration from the fever, drawing blood for tests, running me through all sorts of expensive diagnostic technologies and checking for diseases that included Lyme disease, Legionnaire�s. Spotted Rocky Mountain Fever, chicken diseases, cat diseases, horse diseases, barnyard diseases, bacterial pneumonia, and who knows what else. �You are a mystery to us,� I was told repeatedly, until I told the oncologists and infectious disease specialists that I was tired of hearing it. �I just was to be boring and predictable!� I said.

�Do you have pain?� I was asked. Nope. Rashes? Nope. Headaches? Nope. Joint aches? Ditto. My only complaint was that I was INCREDIBLY short of breath (no cough or sore throat, though) and that I had a fever. They even ran me through 3 machines I�ve never seen in my life in the hopes that over the course of two hours (good thing I know how to meditate) these tedious tests could help identify at least the location of the infection. Nada. As I was told, �There are thousands of kinds of bacteria, and it looks like we�re not going to be able to identify what you have.�

After four days, the fever went away and stayed away; I could walk down the hall and back without panting. So I was discharged with bottles of really potent antibiotics to take over 10 days. Ultimately, what they know is that it likely is bacterial, because it responds to antibiotics. And they�re guessing that maybe it was some kind of weird pneumonia, because of my shortness of breath and the fact that one X-ray showed a slight shadow at the bottom of my left lung. As you might expect, the specialists also couldn�t guarantee that the infection had been killed once and for all. So�I finished the last of the antibiotics Saturday. Either the fever will come back in the next few days (please, God, NO!), or I�ll continue to get back into the farm routine and report as scheduled for my next oncologist�s appointment Aug. 6. I would expect to start chemo that same week.

It�s Tuesday today and so far, thank God, I�m not feeling sick. Although�bummer�I�m still a little short of breath. But the steps from our garage to the house are steep and long enough to be a mini-Stairmaster, causing problems to anybody who�s terribly out of shape. Or, at least, that�s what I keep telling myself.

The hospital stay was really hard. First, my breathlessness and inability to do virtually anything was scary. Second, the oncology team, to a person, kept referring to me as �a cancer patient.� �A cancer patient is more susceptible to blood clots, so we�re going to give you shots� . . .�Cancer patients can run fevers caused by tumors, but they don�t respond to antibiotics, so we�ve ruled that out in your case� . . .�When a cancer patient loses more than 10 pounds over a short period, as you have, we have a nutritionist in to insult with you . . .� No one seemed to understand that I�m a vibrant, interesting, adventurous woman who just happens to have cancer.

And third, my room was on an oncology ward where half the patients were really, really sick. Yes, I know that the odds are that I�ll die from the big C, but that doesn�t mean I want to see it happening to others.

All of this combined to make me feel like �a cancer patient,� someone who�s mostly sick and is going downhill. Mark and I spent half of Monday crying together about this. The saving grace was that I asked for a chaplain, and got two wonderful women who were highly supportive, great listeners and helped us start looking again at OUR reality�that I have cancer, and sometimes I�m going to be sick, but I likely still have a lot of days and weeks and months where I can be active and fully enjoy life.

So, now that I�m home again, that�s what I�ve been doing. Mostly, until recently, I�ve been going down to the coop to admire the young chickens, and then down to the barn to work on socializing the kittens, who now number 3. (It�s going slow, except for one merry little sprite I�ve named Harry. We had to put one down who got some sort of respiratory infection and was close to unconscious. It was a sad decision, but this is one of the realities we accepted when we moved out here. Either we treat each barn cat as a pet and make expensive vet visits (despite their adoration of me, and adoration it is, I don�t think ANY of the barn cats would tolerate this), or we do what we can with antibiotics in our farm animal arsenal and say goodbye when we need to. That�s life on the farm. But I still cried.

Last Friday, I felt well enough to go riding with Mark and his daughter Megan, who had come for a visit. It was glorious. The highlight was when we came over a ridge and scared up a very large buck who was bedded down in a narrow spit of trees. He went leaping the full length of a very long meadow, his magnificent velvet-covered antlers and white tail held aloft evident in the sunlight. There�s a saying that I immediately thought of� �Life isn�t measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.� Amen.

Now, of course, Mark is plotting how to stalk and kill this magnificent venison on the hoof in the upcoming bow season. More life on the farm. In the years he�s able to kill a deer, it�s the only red meat we eat. On our ride, we also encountered the fledgling northern goshawk (we had never seen one before him) who haunts our ridges every day, screaming his head off and begging for an adult to come feed him. Hey, fella, you�re never going to catch anything (they swoop through the woods, I�ve read, and grab small birds) if you don�t shut your beak and stop screaming! He also visits our neighbors, who all complain about his annoying and never ending cries. We think it�s thrilling�more breathtaking moments that we so fully savor. . .

We get closer to our neighbors every day�someone frequently stops by our house, or we at theirs. They�re wonderful, hands down. And friends from the Twin Cities visit us frequently�last Saturday, we met friends to go to the Stockholm, Wi, annual art fair (great, but really crowded) and pick our own blueberries (I sat out) at a charming old farm with a 300-degree view of the Rush River valley�magnificent!

All the household remodeling projects are going great. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my new bathroom, with its soothing gray-green walls, slate-framed mirror and deep, deep tub. Our back deck is also finished and is spacious and beautiful. The sad and painful irony is that we wouldn�t be able to afford these projects if I weren�t sick and didn�t have such great disability coverage. (Need I tell you I�d rather be well, and not able to afford any of this!)

This Friday, I�m going to pick up some Adirondack chairs we ordered and the deck will be done. In the meantime, on one cool night (Sunday, maybe?), I sat out on the deck in the dark and meditated, breathing in the cool green breeze and the smell of fresh sawn cedar. Life doesn�t get much better �and Mark and I have gazillions of such moments out here. Yes, the cancer sucks, sucks, sucks, but we have some amazing blessings, too, and we know it.

All for now, folks. God bless you all, and I�ll work harder to keep this site updated�God and marauding bacteria permitting.

Love,

Meta

Tuesday, June 26, 2007 5:27 PM CDT

Hi, all! Well, it�s high time for an update, beginning (of course) with what Mark and I call the a.m./p.m. BM report. I�m improved, but still pretty bloated and my colon still noticeably reluctant. Plus, I still have some pain. Oh well, and thank god for medications. Now if my Size 10 waist size would just return to normal, instead of the 16 I currently seem to be Good thing I have some expandable-waist and �when I weighed more� shorts. To coin a phrase, this too shall pass. Or not�there are worse problems.

Still on the health front, I got the gall bladder surgery biopsy in the mail today. In addition to a few teeny stones, there was some tumor in the duct that didn�t show up on the CAT scan. So the problem wasn�t as coincidental as it first appeared. The next time I see Dr. P., I�m planning on pushing for a PET scan next time, rather than a CAT scan, which is what she recommends. Also, from the earlier exploratory surgery, I�ve developed a lump (slightly smaller than my thumb) below my belly button, where the surgical incision apparently grabbed some other tissue while it was healing. This may or may not cause a problem later that requires its removal (see statement above��there are worse problems�). I�m still hoping the surgeon can go back in and get any remaining tumor after my next chemo regimen; if so, it would be easy enough for him to remove it then. My chemo restarts, by the way, July 9�giving me some much-appreciated time to feel better (I�m still weak from the bout of fevers) so I can ride, and play, and work in the yard.

A lot has been going on! About six weeks ago, we bought a dozen chicks to occupy the second half of our chicken coop. Neither of us has ever raised chickens before, so a whole new experience. We have eight older girls and a rooster on one side, and the newbies on the right. We bought two kinds of egg layers: Buff Orpingtons, which are a pretty red gold color and lay brown eggs, and Araucanas, which are mottled (black, white, russet, or a combination thereof), and lay beige, brown and green eggs. We bought 12 because we were warned that chicks are fragile, and it�s normal to lose a few the first couple of weeks, when they require a lot of warmth and clean water/feed. Well, we still have 12�and come fall, we�ll have more eggs than we know what to do with!

We�re going to instill a rule that no one leaves the house�fuel oil guy, UPS, friends, family, mailman�without a dozen eggs. Even then, we�re likely to have plenty.The chicks have passed from the cute fuzzball stage through the ugly feathers and down to where they look like small adults. They�re all lovely�although many have changed color during this transition. Several are black and white mottled, and look a lot like osprey (or what some people know as fish eagles). We�ll have to take some pix. I told Mark I named one of them �Sissy,� and he asked which one? That�s the beauty of it�they�re ALL named Sissy, which makes it easier for us chemo-and-age-challenged to remember.

In the barn, our one female cat out of seven gave birth about four weeks ago. (For those who are counting, we used to have eight, but Butch the Bad likely got eaten by coyotes last fall�I found a cat jawbone up on one of the bluffs, alas�and Butch was much too bad/psychotic to be killed by anything other than a whole pack of animals). The momma is Spooky, a teeny black and white spotted cat, so named because she always hid when I showed up. She was the second to the last to enter the Meta-fold (Shadow was the last�he looks like a long-hair Siamese). At first, we thought Spook�s kittens must be stillborn, because we never heard a mew from any of them. But about a week and a half ago, Mark entered the barn unexpectedly, and found four little spotted fuzzballs on the hay, all of whom disappeared immediately. It turns out they�ve been hiding under the thin wooden pallets that the hay sits on�which is absolute genius on Spook�s part. See, male cats tend to kill kittens to force the female back into heat, so they can breed again�and there is absolutely no way any of those cats could slip between the pallet boards.

Since I�ve been mostly laid up the past month or so, I hadn't gotten a good look at them�until this afternoon, that is, when I slipped into the barn and the male cats weren�t around. Gosh, they�re ADORABLE�and I�ve seen a number of litters. One is mostly white, with a black head and tail. Another is calico�orange, black and white, with one black ear and one orange. She�s our favorite so far. Another is black and white, like Mom, and another is mostly black. It�s a puzzle who the father might be. We have three orange/buff cats, two black spotted cats, and Shadow, the hairy Siamese. So it�s anyone�s guess. I can�t wait until they�re old enough not to hide, so I can start loving them up and playing with them! Mark says we can only keep one, so . . .who wants a kitten? I can assure you they�ll be well-socialized!

On the home front, our master bathroom finally got finished today --well, almost�it still needs a light above the mirror, some trim and caulking. This should sound familiar to anyone who�s ever had contracting work done on their house. In our case, it wasn�t so bad�it took five weeks instead of the two and a half I had so optimistically anticipated. In this case, the biggest problem was when I opened the boxes of tile I had ordered and picked up in Minneapolis, a night before the very busy tile guy was coming over, only to find that they consisted of two entirely different sizes and patterns. But it looks great now�the fiberglass shower with glass door has been replaced by a two-foot deep vanilla-colored airjet tub, and we have vanilla-painted cabinets custom-built two inches taller than normal for our height, plus a huge mirror framed in slate. I can�t wait�with all our houses and home improvements, I�ve never had a great tub�until, I hope, now!

One thing I really had fun with was that I set myself a goal of not paying full price for anything, and mostly, I succeeded�-close-out tile, contractors� price for the tub through some serendipitous questions and connections, etc. Even so, I�d forgotten how breathtakingly expensive remodeling projects can be. Next, we�re replacing the back deck, after we regrade the sloping back yard away from the house to address a drainage problem. �Then are we done?� Mark says hopefully. Well . .

We both absolutely love our house, what we�ve done to it, and the deep and immediate connection we have to the seasons and the outdoors. Thank you again, Karen and Richard, for entrusting it to us. I read the other day, in an article about home building, that your goal shouldn�t be to build the biggest, most lavish or most impressive home you can. Rather, everything should be planned �to create an environment in which you can thrive.� That�s absolutely what we have.

Outside, Mark recently transplanted some giant hosta from near the garage to under some pine trees within view of my office, creating the meditation garden I�d been visualizing since we moved in last summer. For a border, we used native limestone and sandstone rocks that Mark gathered along local roads, in places where some bluffs had fractured and created a rock slide.

It�s a beautiful little oasis now, and will be even more beautiful as we add other shade-loving plants. Additionally, around the house, one of our new friends down here, Mary Kriese, volunteered to buy flowers and and fill all the pots we had, so we�d have some color on the front deck. While she was out here, she also noticed that our daylily bed was overgrown, and began transplanting daylilies here and there�along with some asters our friends the Liljas had brought down from their incredible backyard garden outside Minneapolis. Until now, I�ve mostly been in a supervisory role, but I�m starting to feel well enough so I can start putzing around the yard again myself.

All for now. I have plenty more to tell you, but I�ll save it for next time. You have been so generous with your e-mails, cards and even gifts that my heart overflows. I�m humbled by your care and attention, and we appreciate the love flowing our way more than you can know.

God bless,

Meta

Friday, June 22, 2007 4:15 PM CDT

Yippee! Yippee! FINALLY�some good news! My bowel isn�t obstructed, although the doctors last weekend had kind of wondered. The doctor�s explanation is that so my body has been under so many stresses recently, that my colon apparently has decided �enough� and that it would rather just stop working until everything else is back to normal. So I�m back on a normal diet and able to take my usual herbal teas, wheatgrass-based drinks (tastes about like what you�d expect�dried grass clippings) and laxatives to see if I can get things moving again. If not, I have a prescription for a muscle stimulant to try.

In the meantime, I continue to feel, well, crappy (hmm, can you feel like crap if you don�t? Sounds like a Buddhist koan--i.e., one of those unanswerable questions). I can�t believe how huge and uncomfortable my belly is. I told Mark if something suddenly large pops out of my belly, looks around and starts skittering around the floor (ala the movie �Alien�), to please catch it and stomp it to death. That definitely would be another first for my Mayo doctors.

So I�m lying around, mostly, and waiting for things to, well, pass. The birds at the feeder are fun right now�I just counted 9 male goldfinches and a male rose-breasted grosbeak at our backyard feeders. Plus, the daylily bed outside my office is in full bloom.

Gosh, I�m giddy just at the IDEA of feeling better! All for now, and I�ll write soon about some of the more fun things going on here.

Thanks so much for your very thoughtful e-mails and calls--plus all the energy I know you're sending me.

Love,

Meta

Thursday, June 21, 2007 6:35 PM CDT

Hi, all. Well, the last week, to put it bluntly, have approached pure hell. And guess what? It looks like I have another problem that may require operation.

OK, God, I get it. I GET IT! My bad medical luck isn�t over. Can you at least clue me in on what you have in mind?

Anyway, here�s what�s been happening:

I'd been recovering nicely, even did yard work and had several rides, until last week. I spent all day Thursday in bed with chills, huddled under a comforter despite the hot, humid weather. Finally, late afternoon, I realized just how sick I felt and asked Mark to take my temp. It was 103, opening up a whole new series of (mostly) fruitless and frustrating visits to health departments in southeast Minnesota. Namely:

1) Off to Red Wing�s emergency room we went late last Friday, after checking in to see what Mayo wanted me to do. Three hours and several blood tests and a urinalysis later (all results negative), I�m sent home with amoxicillin and told to come back if it doesn�t help. Friday morning, my temp had dropped to 100. But by evening it was back to 102. So we wait until Saturday afternoon to give the antibiotic a fighting chance, then call the Mayo oncologist on call. He says go back to Red Wing and have them focus on liver function tests, as the infection probably has something to do with the recent gall bladder surgery. We wait until after dinner, then:

2) Back we go to Red Wing, to a crowded waiting room. After an hour wait, we meet with another doc who orders the requisite tests, then also orders a chest X-ray and blood cultures (which take several days to produce results). Two hours later and the liver tests and X-ray come back, all negative. I ask the doc if he could at least give me a different antibiotic, in the hopes it might work better. He says he�s loathe to do so unless he can talk to my oncologist. We don�t have the Mayo number with us, so we go home. It�s 2 a.m.

3) Sunday morning, Mark calls Mayo again. By this time, I�m sick, sick, sick. I can�t think straight and I�m EXTREMELY scared and worried. Mayo says go to the emergency room at St. Mary�s (one of two Mayo hospitals), again on the assumption that the infection has something to do with the gall bladder surgery (St. Mary�s is where I had the surgery). We arrive at 1 and there�s a huge crowd and long wait. I ask if they have someplace I can lie down and they say no. So I wedge my body into a corner of a four-foot-long couch and promptly pass out. I�m vaguely aware of the nurses becoming alarmed and talking about my going to sleep so quickly. They call my name, take my vitals and find me a bed.

Sometime mid-afternoon, we see the emergency room doc. He orders more blood cultures (good luck finding a new vein, fellas) and a CAT scan of my belly. He says he�s thinking possible abscess or bowel obstruction, either or both of which could happen following surgery. I start crying after he leaves. A bowel obstruction? You mean more surgery (which does nothing to help slow the cancer, more anesthesia (which is killing my brain cells by the thousands, I�m sure) and a further delay in the chemo I had wanted to start so quickly and aggressively? What in the WORLD have I done to deserve this?

We don�t get the CAT scan results until 9 p.m., resulting in one very angry and determined husband and one wife who�s alternatively having hot flashes and hallucinating about decorating. At one point, I even recalled the manufacturer of the bathroom light I bought two years ago, which I have been trying to remember for months. Weird.

After much consultation, the ER doc and a surgeon give me the CAT scan results:

1) I don�t have an abscess

2) I may or may not have a bowel obstruction. When they press on my bowel, I tell them I feel so generally crappy that I can�t even tell what hurts anymore, or where. I say it feels more tender than usual and my, ah, BMs have been infrequent.

3) One of the incisions from the exploratory surgery has managed to get tangled with some abdominal tissue as it healed, creating a large, lumpy hernia. This may or may not be posing a problem. But since it doesn�t hurt me, it�s probably not the source of the infection.

4) The cancer is continuing to grow. The tumor in the spleen, for instance, has increased 33 percent in size in the past 5 weeks. AND

5) They don�t know what�s causing the infection, or what should be done.

So, they say, they�ve decided to send me to Methodist Hospital, Mayo�s second facility, to be admitted to the oncology unit and see what the folks there think. And they start a saline drip, because I�m seriously dehydrated.

4) One humid and nausea-inducing ambulance ride later (hey, guys, did I tell you I have Meniere�s disease and get dizzy extremely easily?) I�m whisked to the hematology and oncology unit, where I expected to be left alone until Monday. Instead, a very smiley-faced, chubby oncologist comes in immediately. He says everyone�s finding the cause of my infection extremely puzzling. �Have you been to a foreign country in the past four months? Are any of your animals ill? Could you have been bitten by a tick? (An emphatic �no� on that point�somehow the ticks know my blood runs with poison). Hmmm,� he says, looking at his notes. �And you don�t have an implanted port or catheter?�

Wait a minute, yes I do have a port. �Well, a port infection could account for your fever. We�ll do a blood culture from your port to see if we find anything. In the meantime, I�m going to treat this like a port infection, and we�ll see what happens.� Hallelujah! New antibiotics, FINALLY!!!!

Eight hours, two blood draws and one small emergency later (I woke up, looked down at my arm and saw red streaks running up the arteries from the infusion site. Turns out I have a mild allergy to Cipro by IV, so they cut the infusion rate in half) and my temp is 99! 99! When the oncologist makes his rounds, he says I can go home any time after lunch and I�ll need to keep taking two antibiotics. He says he�ll also cancel the chemo I had scheduled and make arrangements to schedule it in another week. By the time I�m ready to leave, I notice I have some pain in a small part of my abdomen. I tell the discharging physician, who asks if I believe I should stay. I tell her I don�t know, that after feeling rotten for the past four days, I can�t tell what�s new or what�s serious. So she discharges me. Mark and I are home by 6, and my temperature is still down!!!!

Cause for celebration, right? Gosh, I was so excited at just the IDEA of feeling good again. Well, hell. Of course that�s not the end of it.

By Wednesday of this week, I haven�t gone to the bathroom for two days and my belly is distended from my breastbone down to my pelvis. It�s weird how quickly you learn to think in farm analogies: I am now shaped like a round bale of hay. I call my physician�s assistant at Mayo (the doc is on vacation through this week), and she asks me if I�ve had nausea or vomiting. I tell her no. I keep getting asked this, so it must be a sign of bowel obstruction. She recommends that I start a liquid diet, to be on the safe side, and maybe my bowels are just protesting from the surgeries and fever. If I�m not better by Friday, I should come in.

So this morning, I realized it was getting worse. (I told Mark, �Why don�t we just stick a knitting needle into my belly and I�ll fly around the room like a deflating balloon, going pffzzzzt, until I�m all better?� Gosh, were it only that easy.). I called the assistant again and asked if she could have my oncology surgeon read the CAT scan (by now, he�s on handshake terms with my innards). She said good idea, and also recommended that I come in to Mayo today for a bowel x-ray. We go back to get the results at 9:45 tomorrow morning.

What I know is that bowel obstructions are fairly common for women who have had ovarian cancer surgeries. I also know that any time you cut into the bowel, you�re facing a fairly long stay in the hospital (10 days for me the last time) until this amazingly sensitive organ decides it will work again. I also don�t know what else this could be, but maybe there�s the possibility out there of something far easier to fix? I can�t begin to tell you how beaten down and discouraged I feel. My poor valiant body is being worn out with all this other crap, and meantime I can�t do a damn thing about enjoying summer, building myself up, or aggressively fighting the cancer.

Whatever it is, it needs to be fixed. I just hope something good healthwise is going to happen to me at some point. But I gotta tell you, I�m becoming increasingly pessimistic. God bless, love to all of you, and keep sending me your positive energy, if you would, please.

Love,

Meta and Mark

Monday, June 18, 2007 12:11 AM CDT

Hi..

It's me again.

Well, after four hard days, Meta's fever has broken. The oncologist last night asked "and you don't have a port, right?" So, it's likely that the plastic port she had put in two years ago to receive chemo treatments is the source of the infection. We won't know till the blood culture grows over the next few days. But, the Cipro drip, along with some other antibiotic, seems to have knocked it down to normal.

Rather than keep her here for two days while she's well and the culture is growing, we're going home! We're both rather whipped at this point. It's really taken a toll on Meta's morale. At least there wasn't a surgery this time.

Thanks for your continued thoughts and prayers. They mean a lot.

Love,
Mark

Sunday, June 17, 2007 9:22 PM CDT

Hi...

Wish I had better news. Meta has been running a fever between 101 and 103 for the past four days. We've been to the Red Wing hospital emergency room twice for various tests at her oncologist's suggestion and are at Mayo's St. Mary's hospital right now. It's about 9:30 Sunday night and we've been here all day for more tests. They're going to admit her to Mayo's Methodist hospital later tonight so the oncology staff can get in on the act. They just can't find a reason for the fever and penicillin isn't taking care of it.

Meta's been feeling really weak, so it's good we're here now. She'd meant to writd to you before now, but has pretty much been sleeping the past four days.

Please pray for her. This is getting really old. We're praying she doesn't have to face any more surgery.

Love,
Mark

Friday, June 1, 2007 1:44 PM CDT

Hi, all. Wednesday was when I was supposed to have my second treatment with Taxol. But instead, that got canceled, and yesterday morning, I had laparoscopic surgery to have my gallbladder removed instead. Yep, just 16 days after my laparoscopic first surgery. ( I now have four new incisions in my belly, plus the two from the surgery two weeks ago. Three more, and I�d resemble a nine-hole golf course.) And nope, the timing is terrible and I sure as hell didn�t need this. And nope, this couldn�t have been prevented, or surgery avoided by treatment with drugs. And yep, this is totally unrelated to the cancer.

And, as the final straw, I can�t have chemo again for three weeks to allow the incisions to heal and my body to start feeling better. I�m in a fair amount of pain. One question: OK, powers of the universe, have I had just about enough bad breaks to suit you? Is this when things turn around, and I start getting only good news? (See the end of this for some good news.)

Oh, and did I mention that just to make all the family�s lives interesting, my stepmother Marcia had to go to Mayo and stay overnight Wednesday for treatment and observation due to her increasing grogginess? The whole family has been watching her with concern for the last week. But she seemed to be getting better after Dad took her to Mayo a week ago to have her checked out, and the specialists reduced some of her medications. I�m not sure what the diagnosis was this time, or why she was kept overnight. But I�m hopeful I�ll feel ambulatory enough later today to stop over there for a brief visit and learn more.

Anyway, back to my saga. Taxol looks like it�s going to be hard�I ended up exhausted and bedridden for the first four days. At the same time, I don�t know how much of that was still due to the surgery and the effects of the gas they used�plus what turned out to be a developing gall bladder problem. Last Friday, I began having intermittent stabbing pains under my lower right ribs. I attributed this to the bone pain that Taxol can cause, and knew it would go away. But it didn�t. By Memorial Day, I couldn�t walk upright, couldn�t breathe without a sharp stab of pain, couldn�t move without stabs of pain, couldn�t sleep . . . I was pretty miserable.

OK, we thought, so this must be related to some after-effect of the surgery. So I called the Mayo surgery department to see what they thought. Given the high level of pain I was having and my inability to breathe normally, they told me to go to the Red Wing-Fairview emergency department ASAP. There was an exam, some painful prodding of my abdomen, and a return that afternoon to have an ultrasound done on my gall bladder.

Then the radiology person told us that I had �missed� my appointment. (ER said to show up any time between 3 and 6, Radiology said they had slotted me in for 2:15, and �somebody� apparently had failed to call us.) I�d have to wait until Wednesday. When I protested, she asked me half-teasingly if I was going to �be a difficult patient.� Mark and I went outside to talk about our options, and I began to cry. (I�d had enough of hospitals and insensitive staff plus the pain by that point.)

Mark wheeled back around into ER and said he�d like to make a complaint. �You want to make a complaint? You want to make a complaint in writing?� the lady asked anxiously. Apparently this is a BIG DEAL�try it if you want to see the reaction some time. The head of the radiology department came out to personally apologize and escort us back, we were put in a special waiting room, and a half hour later I had the results (presented by the ER doctor, who was again personally brought back to me by the department head).

Turns out I had very small stones in my gall bladder that wouldn�t have shown on a CAT scan, and the bile duct was inflamed to at least twice its size, which would make any pressure put on that area extremely painful. Mark asked whether such attacks might go away on their own, and he said yes, if they occurred for a couple of hours, but not one that had gotten worse over the space of five days.)

So Wednesday I called my medical oncologist (only 10 minutes before she called back, which is one reason why I love Mayo; they don�t mess around when you have a problem). She said chemo was off, bring the sonogram results with us, and she would schedule blood work and a consultation with surgeons as soon as she could.

At 1:30, we met with a young general surgeon who said the gall bladder needed to come out if I was having so much pain. Although this procedure now is done laparoscopically, he said there was a 1 in 4 chance they�d have to make a large incision�either because the gall bladder was too inflamed for removal through a smaller hole, or because any local cancer could make it impossible to see what they were doing. If that were the case, I�d have to be hospitalized for five days, and it would take six weeks to fully recover.

Interestingly, he said this was the first time the Mayo team had removed the gall bladder of a patient with cancer (most cancer patients don�t have that level of bad luck, I guess, or maybe their gall bladders were removed earlier.) �It�s extremely unusual,� he said. For that reason, he said, he had discussed the case with three other surgeons, who all had agreed that they just didn�t know what to expect until they made a couple of incisions and began looking around.

�Have you eaten lunch?� he said. �Because if you haven�t, we could do the surgery late this afternoon.� (Yikes!) I had, so Mark and I showed back up at 5:45 the next morning. By 9:30 a.m., the surgery was done and I was back in recovery. (In the meantime, the operating room nurses named me �best patient of the week because you�re so calm and easy to deal with. You�re great.� Hey, if surgery was going to stop the pain, I was pretty gung ho.)

So we DID have good news�I had the less invasive surgery, and recovery will be much quicker. They had to cut my stomach muscles, so moving or coughing or sneezing still hurts a ton (plus the gas and throat pain associated with a lap procedure�see my last posting). But I�m not hurting where and how I was before, and this pain will definitely decrease. I�m hopeful I�ll be able to get out in the yard by Sunday or Monday, and maybe even get a couple of trail rides in before I begin chemo again. Being in nature, with my huge, strong, loving, bursting-with-energy-and-vitality gorgeous horse is definitely healing (oh, yes, Mark, of course I�m talking about you as well).

The other good news was this. The surgeon came to my room afterward and said, �Oh, good. There�s a computer in here so I can show you the pictures. This is really exciting.� There�s no way, ordinarily, for doctors to get a detailed picture of cancer a week before chemo (as my surgeon did during the exploratory surgery)--and then to go back, a week and a half after chemo, to se what the chemo had done. Essentially, this is what my two surgeries permitted, he explained. �I don�t know much about Taxol,� he said, �but if this is the result of just one infusion, I�m really impressed. Your small cancer deposits are melting away.�

He showed us two �before� and �after� pictures. In the first, there were two distinct, swollen cancer deposits. A week and a half later, and those beads were completely gone. The second showed a bunch of tiny cancer deposits, plus a white area that he said was also cancer. A week and a half later, and most of the deposits were gone, and there was no sign of the white area. So this may be really good news.

I say �may be� because as a cancer patient, after a while you get so you don�t trust good news very much. Getting too hopeful is simply a way to be horrifically disappointed. The pictures seem compelling, but what if . . .? And after all, he�s not a cancer expert, is he? . . .

I still feel some hope about being able to live a good, long life. But I now envision that as 5 years, not 30. (Even writing that makes me sad, but that is what I have come to think.) I�m nowhere as optimistic as I once was. Again, it�s a strong protective mechanism. It�s hard to take reversal after reversal�and watch my local friends who have ovarian cancer and are struggling�without getting somewhat pessimistic and worn down.

At the very least, though, it appears the Taxol is knocking the sh** out of the cancer, and thus may be able to block or at least delay its growth till I start chemo again.

Anyway, all for now. Mark just made me a wonderful snack, then I have a date with two Percocets, a home decorating magazine and my bed. Please e-mail or call or send a card; I often feel lonely and somewhat isolated. Plus, it�s just nice hearing from folks that you care.

Love and hugs (only not too hard),

Meta

Friday, May 18, 2007 2:17 PM CDT

Well, OK, so the push for surgery didn�t work. It was disappointing to say the least. �Hope is the thing with feathers,� poet Emily Dickinson wrote. Yes, and sometimes that thing flies away. I woke up in the recovery room, assessed the situation and thought, �Damn, there are no tubes coming out of me anywhere. Bummer� (actually, the word started with �f,� but never mind).

In the process I learned: having a throat tube put down your throat to help you breathe during surgery feels exactly like they used a LARGE garden hose (and without lubricant, at that); lapro surgery entails two incisions about the size of your little finger, which they actually glue together after they�re done; anesthesia makes me incredibly weepy and irritable; even a small surgery wears you out a lot; AND, according to the nurse who got me ready, I�m �the best enema taker� she�s ever seen (don�t ask). As Mark remarked, this is not exactly a readily transferable skill.

So I�m sore and have been napping a lot, but I�m snapping back. Yesterday I tottered down to the chicken coop and spent 45 minutes observing the behavior of our new chicks. They�re actually kind of amusing. Today, we brushed the horses, I filled all the bird feeders and birdbaths, and I picked up around the house a little. By Sunday, I�m hoping to be able to ride my big beautiful red horse.

We also were able to talk to the surgeon before I was discharged a few hours after the procedure was done. We continue to think he�s a really cool guy. He came trundling into the room, following a major operation, pushing a computer on a stand because �I know you�ll want to see what I found.� You�ll remember he said he couldn�t operate unless he was sure he could remove all visible evidence of the disease. Unfortunately, once he started looking around, he saw between 100-200 blisterlike cancer growths scattered across just about every organ in my abdomen. He showed us pictures of them on the computer. That amount seems horrific, I know, but it�s all relative. After the first surgery, according to his report at the time, �thousands or even tens of thousands� of the same kind of growths remained.

Last time, they coated my organs like a blanket. This time, they looked like a rash. And they�re teeny�between 1/25 of an inch to 1/12 of an inch in size. The other thing he discovered is that I have no adhesions (internal scarring and tissue growth) from the first surgery whatsoever. Generally, this scarring makes it harder to take a look around and can interfere with surgery. Having NO scarring is relatively rare�and opens up interesting possibilities. For instance, if my number gets down to 10-20 during the next chemo, he said, it would be no problem to go back in, see if the small tumors are gone�and, if they are, remove the two larger tumors that showed on the CAT scan (chemo generally is not effective at totally removing anything larger than 1 centimeter). Or, if surgery is not an option for some reason at that point, he can go in and look after all the chemo is done (and, one hopes, my CA 125 is normal) and see if any cancer remains. If it does, we can then either continue the same chemo or immediately start with something new.

Whew-sorry for all the detail. I know this gets confusing for anyone who doesn�t have to live this every day.

OK, so it�s onto the next chemo. Because the incisions are so small, I don�t have to wait 10 days�in fact, I�m starting a new regimen Monday. After a lot of thought and intuition and research, I�ve decided not to do Doxil at this time. Although my oncologist says few people have side effects, all the literature says 1) wear loose-fitting clothing; 2) don�t do anything that can cause chafing on your skin; and 3) avoid getting hot. Hmmm. Riding tights, 3-hour trail rides, summer in Minnesota AND hot flashes. This sounds like something I�ll want to save until winter. So I�m going with the most aggressive chemo option I have: Taxol, which is one of the two drugs I had two years ago and which breast cancer patients also take. Generally, most people can�t tolerate this drug after the first regimen; they get nerve damage that causes numbness and loss of function in their hands and feet. I had tingling while I was getting treatment, but that�s all�a stroke of luck I credit to acupuncture, Chinese healing, and taking a supplement which is purported to help. Sometimes they save Taxol when every other option has been exhausted. But why
save the strongest drug for last? I want to be as aggressive as possible, which is also why I was willing to risk surgery again.

So starting Monday, I�ll begin a six-month regimen of Taxol. I�ll get an hour-long drip one day a week for three weeks in a row, then a week off, measure the CA 125 level, then start all over again. Side effects are yet to be determined for me. Other than the nerve damage, possibilities include partial or complete hair loss (no biggie), bone pain, nausea, diarrhea and white and red blood count suppression. It�s hard to know how I�ll react. Last time, I got three hours of Taxol at a time, plus carboplatin with it. This time the dose will be just for an hour at a time, plus we can reduce the concentration if the side effects are too bad. So I�m hopeful they�ll be tolerable�altho I can endure a whole heck of a lot of bother if the drug is effective at killing the cancer.

That�s probably enough for now. Our bathroom remodel is going well, the weather is gorgeous, our yard is a virtual refuge for songbirds, and Mark and I are attending an international Chinese healing conference for the next two days in Minneapolis. I�ve had personal healing sessions with the leader, Master Linn, and people come from all over the world to see him. It should be uplifting�we�ll do meditation and exercises to clear blocked energy and promote healing. t can�t hurt!

More later and much love,

Meta

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 1:16 PM CDT

Meta is in recovery as I write this. They did the laparoscopic procedure and saw more evidence of the cancer, so the surgeon did not do the actual surgery itself. The news sucks. We thought we were due for a positive development. I don't know yet exactly what the finding was, but I assume he saw the very small tumors he found during the initial surgery two years ago. He'd said they wouldn't do anything further if they couldn't get all visible tumors.

I expect to talk to the doctor this afternoon, then Meta and I will head back to the farm. It'll be back to chemo in about 10 days or so I think. So, we'll be hoping for better developments at that stage.

I know Meta will write something more eloquent when she's feeling better. Our love to all of you who keep tabs on how she's doing. Thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers.

Mark

Monday, May 14, 2007 8:14 PM CDT

Hi, all. In my last post, I was talking about the possibility of surgery. Well, there was another turn in the roller coaster ride when I saw Dr. Wilson the surgeon today, with the bottom line being: I MAY have major surgery tomorrow. He said the only time he will do surgery is if he�s fairly confident of being able to remove all visible disease. That�s different than during my first surgery, when the goal was simply to remove as much cancer as he could. Once you�ve recurred, he said, it�s no longer enough to just remove whatever�s possible (that�s because the recurrence drugs are nowhere near as effective at mopping up what�s left). But if he can remove all visible cancer, I would essentially get a fresh start with all this�and, provided I respond to the next chemo, I would have a reasonable chance of a longer remission. Hoo-ha!

Unfortunately, CAT scans are limited in their ability to show very small tumors. So, at noon tomorrow I�m scheduled for an exploratory laparoscopy. They�ll knock me out, then he�ll make a small incision between my ribs, insert a scope, and take a thorough look around. If I have just the two tumors shown on the CAT scan, or a few more that are sizeable enough to remove, he�ll proceed with full-blown surgery. I may be in the hospital five days, or it may be longer if the tumor in my abdomen is attached to the bowel and he has to remove a small piece of it.

On the other hand, if he sees lots of little cancer beads (like the first time), he�ll close up the small incision and I�ll go home. In that case, I�ll start a new chemo after a recovery period of about 10 days.

Mark asked Dr. Wilson how likely he thought it was that he�d be able to do surgery, and he said, �Somwhere between 30 and 50 percent.� Those are great odds, compared with the effectiveness of most of the remaining chemo regimens. Mark and I are both feeling hopeful, which is actually scary. The idea of having this hope dashed is daunting. Yet, for this evening at least, we�re going to enjoy it!

All for now�I have to go chug stuff to clean out my bowel. (Why, oh why, couldn�t I have had toe cancer?) Pray for us that once I wake up from the procedure, I�m sick as a dog, with a tube stuck in every orifice, and ensconced in a hospital bed. Then I�ll know I had surgery!!!

Love to all,

Meta

Saturday, May 12, 2007 10:23 PM CDT

Hi, all! Well, there was an interesting wrinkle when I had my tests and received the results this week. As expected, the cancer has continued to grow. The CA 125 was 200�less than I had prepared myself for. (Expect the worst, then be pleasantly surprised by anything lesser, is my motto!) The CAT scan showed two or three tumors. The radiologist identified two�one near my colon, and one in my spleen. My chemo oncologist thought maybe she saw another near my colon. All are somewhere between 1 and 2 centimeters, or .4 to .8 inches. Yes, that sounds scary, but it�s a far cry from when I was first diagnosed, when I had one grapefruit-sized tumor, one baseball-sized, and two the size of fists.

Anyway, the interesting part came when the oncologist said that I might be a candidate for another surgery. Doctors only will do surgery when there is a good chance of getting the bulk of the cancer�like when I was first diagnosed. I was NOT a candidate for surgery during the first recurrence because the cancer was what is called �diffuse,� forming a thick blanket along my diaphragm. This time, at least on the CAT scan, the three tumors appear �discrete��that is, standalone and capable of being removed. So Mark and I have an appointment Monday afternoon with both Dr. P, the chemo specialist oncologist, and Dr. Wilson, the surgeon who did my first operation. It will be up to Dr. Wilson whether he thinks we can advance my chances by doing surgery again, and whether the likely benefits outweigh the typical surgical risks.

Mark and I are both excited by the possibility of surgery. In fact, when Dr. P offered up the option last week (Mark was out of town), she said, �I know this may be a surprise. I�m sure you�ll want to think about it and discuss it with Mark, and then get back to me.� I immediately told her that I thought I could speak for Mark, and that I was interested in talking to the surgeon ASAP. (It�s a sober commentary on just how bad this cancer is, that major surgery sounds like good news!)

I had read about secondary surgeries before, and had in fact asked if I was a candidate during the first recurrence. Dr. P. was careful to tell me that there are no conclusive studies showing that second ovarian-cancer surgeries can extend survival. And I discovered this when I went home and started doing Internet research on my own. What I DID find, however, were several small studies (30-60 women each) in Europe that showed such surgeries could be beneficial in some cases. The strongest influencing factors are 1) whether the surgeon was able to remove all tumors larger than 1 centimeter during the first surgery (yes, in my case�actually, he got everything larger than half a centimeter); 2) whether the patient responded strongly and positively to the first chemo regimen (yes, again); 3) whether the first remission lasted at least 12 months (no, mine was about 10); and 4) whether the surgeon is able to remove all tumors larger than 1 centimeter during the second surgery as well (remains to be seen). In such cases, a second surgery extended the patients� lives by an extra year to more than an extra four years (WOW!)

Depending on what the amazing Dr. Wilson says, the surgery could take place as early as next week�and possibly as early as Tuesday. He likely would cut through the scar I already have, and may have to extend it upward a bit if he needs to remove the spleen (an organ which helps the immune system but which you can live without). Damn, there goes my opportunity to wear string bikinis.

What we WON�T know until or unless he does surgery is whether there are more 1-2 centimeter tumors than the CAT scan showed (my original CAT scan two years ago missed three out of the four tumors�and, if so, whether those tumors can be removed. We also can�t know ahead of time how many small cancer growths there are that are too small to be detected by the CAT scan, and are too small and numerous to remove. Last time, there were thousands of such cancer �beads,� as Dr. Wilson described them. It�s probably logical to assume that that will be the case again.

If he IS able to do surgery, I likely would spend about 5 days in the hospital. I would be wiped out for a couple of weeks, and wouldn�t be able to ride for at least another couple of weeks after that. Although that�s disappointing, it�s a small price to pay for possibly extending my survival. I also would start a new chemo, in an effort to kill off the cancer deposits that couldn�t be surgically removed. If I�m NOT a surgical candidate for whatever reason, I�ll start a new chemo Monday as soon as the surgical consultation is over.

Mark and I are continuing to have just a super time. If it weren�t for the cancer (yeah, that�s a pretty crappy if), I might even feel a little guilty about how remarkable our life here is. Last week, we went whitewater kayaking on our favorite Minnesota river, the Kettle River, with Mark�s son Brian and our new neighbor Brad�who, by the weirdest of coincidences, turns out to be a highly proficient whitewater boater (What are the odds? I ask you). It�s the first time Mark and I have done whitewater since April of last year. The water level was perfect (2.1, for you boaters out there), and because it was a weekday, we had this beautiful wild river totally to ourselves.

We�ve also been riding our horses as much as we can, including our longest trail ride ever today�3 hours�entirely on neighbors� trails. We are SO lucky in this regard; it wasn�t something we had expected when we bought our place, and it�s just been a remarkable benefit. Most people either have to ride on gravel roads or trailer their horses somewhere to get away from cars and have a picturesque ride. We just have to go out the back of the pasture or down the road a bit to access the most remarkable and diverse trails�everything from steep trails sheltered by a gallery of oaks, to beautiful thickly wooded valleys, to high expansive meadows with views that go on forever.

I realize after such activities that I�m not in perfect health. I get really tired, and I�m frequently mildly nauseated. But I�m not about to let either factor stop me from enjoying life just as much as I possibly can.

Yesterday, we added to our chicken flock by buying a dozen chicks and setting them up in a special, heated brooding area that we had created in one of our two chicken coops. You have no idea how cute these little girls are�one breed we bought have racing stripes on their heads and backs. We�re hoping they all live; they�re pretty fragile in the first week or so. At any rate, it will be about 20 weeks before they start adding to our egg stash. We picked eight chicks that likely will lay either pale green or brown eggs, and four that lay brown eggs. It�s not necessarily that we need more eggs right now. Rather, it�s just fun to be able to send friends home with organic eggs. Plus, the 8 hens we currently have will lay increasingly fewer eggs as they get older.

All for now, folks. Tomorrow, we�re meeting friends for breakfast, going riding again (weather permitting) and meeting Mark�s sister Jill in St. Paul for dinner. I�ll update you Monday on what we hear.

Love to you all,

Meta

Saturday, May 12, 2007 10:21 PM CDT

Sunday, April 29, 2007 3:13 PM CDT

Hi, all! Well, phooey, the tamoxifen didn�t work to slow or stop the growth of the cancer. I had my blood tested last week, and the CA 125 is up to 93. It�s too bad�I could have taken the tamoxifen indefinitely, as long as it continued to work, and the only side effect was wicked night sweats occasionally. On the plus side of not having the drug work, no more soaked bedding and pillows! And that�s two pills�out of 20-plus tablets of prescription drugs and supplements�that I don�t need to take each day.

Every time something doesn�t work, Mark and I have a few days of feeling scared and tremendously sad�we�re having WAY too much fun for me to die prematurely. It�s a reminder of just what a lethal bugger this cancer is. But then we return to how we are choosing to look at this challenge, which is: I still have four or five more drugs to try, which likely will allow me to live at least two more years, unless none of them works whatsoever. And who knows? Maybe one of these will give me a long remission!

Meanwhile, there are tons of clinical trials being done on recurrent ovarian cancer�yesterday, when I checked, there were more than 50 different drug studies nationwide. So something new and promising could be available just when I need it! Plus, I was researching treatments on the Internet and discovered that carboplatin (which was so effective for me, but to which I developed a terrible allergy) could still be an option for me. So I asked my oncologist about it. They�d have to put me in intensive care and do a really slow drip, with doctors standing by in case my heart stopped beating. And even then, the doc said the reaction could kill me. So, obviously, that�s worst, worst case scenario (duh). But if I had run out of options anyway . . .well, I may want to go that route. Fortunately, right now I still have a number of options.

I�m scheduled to get another CA 125 and CAT scan (yum, yum, two big bottles of thick, �berry�-flavored stuff to chug beforehand) on May 9, then see the oncologist, Dr. Peethambaram (we call her Dr. P, for obvious reasons) on May 10 for results. The number almost certainly will be up again �possibly as high as 500, is my guess�and something may or may not show up on the scan.

Regardless of what the scan shows, I�m going to ask to start the new chemo that day. I�ve had a nice long break from chemo (two+ months�it actually seems longer), I feel great, and I�m ready to gird up for battle again. My ammunition this time is a drug called Doxil, which has a 25 percent response rate. That means 25 percent of patients either saw their cancer shrink, disappear or hold steady. That�s a higher response than Gemzar, the last drug I took, so I�m pretty optimistic. I�ll get an infusion of Doxil once a month for four months�so it�s less intense and less time-consuming than my last chemo regimen.

I also scan clinical trials regularly on the Internet, to see if I can find one that I might want to volunteer for. Nothing so far. But Dr. P tells me Mayo is planning a clinical trial, likely late this fall, that will combine a new drug with Topotecan, another ovarian cancer treatment. So, provided I don�t get a long remission, I may be signing up for that.

Unfortunately, the Africa trip is off. But we�re absolutely OK with that. It�s not just that I�ll be immune-suppressed--so it�s not a good idea to be in a place with terrible malaria problems and without state-of-the-art hospitals. It�s also one of the most expensive places to travel to in the world. AND�if we had our druthers, we�d rather take a major vacation in the middle of winter than the best time of the year for Minnesota.

So we�re staying home, which is a pretty sweet deal�summer on the farm, lots of trails to ride, group cookouts to organize, trails to cut on our land . . .we just never run out of things to do. AND we just bought a used horse trailer (we�re picking it up this week) that will allow us to take advantage of miles and miles of state park horse trails that are all within a two-hour drive. Plus, we�ll also be able to take advantage of various saddle club activities around here�which has the added benefit of allowing us to get to know possible new friends, much as we did when we began whitewater kayaking and canoeing. Don�t worry, boaters�we still love you all, and always will!

We�ve lived here nine months now�and we love our farm more than ever, if that�s possible. We never stop marveling at how blessed and fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful place, near my dad and his wife Marcia, with such great neighbors, that so perfectly aligns with our interests and passion for the outdoors.

Our first spring here has been really special. With the help of one of our neighbors, Brad, Mark shot his first wild turkey. That�s no mean feat, given that only 30 percent of Minnesota turkey hunters are successful. Because the birds are blessed with extremely keen eyesight and hearing, hunters have to dress completely in camo (even their faces and guns) and remain perfectly, perfectly still. Up close, the tom was so beautiful, with his mass of soft, bronzy feathers, that we took him over to show Dad and Marcia before registering him and finding a scale to weigh him on (after an hour search, including going to the local DNR office, which seemed like a sure thing), we found a scale down in the basement of a Lake City hardware store. The tom was 21.4 pounds.

The bluebirds are back; Mark cleaned out our five bluebird houses just in time for guests! Every day we hear ruffed grouse thrumming for territory and mates in the woods (a soft �thump, thump, thump� beating sound that gets progressively faster before dying out). We had a huge pileated woodpecker feeding on the suet feeder just six feet from the sliding door of our living room, it�s not unusual for us to have 7 male goldfinches at a time on a single feeder, and I just hung two more wren houses to accommodate the little chatterers I�m hearing right now outside my window.

Next, we�ll be hanging hummingbird feeders and putting up some wood duck houses as potential nesting cavities for screech owls. And, of course, now that the roads and meadows are no longer icy/muddy, we�re getting as much riding in as we can.

All for now. Mark�s family is visiting, and I hear them coming back home after hiking.

Love,

Meta

Friday, March 30, 2007 8:29 PM CDT

Hey, all. Well, the oncologist�s instincts were right: The cancer has returned. My CA 125 was 35 today. The good news is that nothing showed up on the CAT scan�which we actually didn�t expect. Typically, the oncologist told us, she and other docs don�t recommend chemo until some physical symptoms show up (given that, we�re not quite sure why she was so gung ho to start another chemo last time we saw her, but who knows�she�s human). Not starting chemo next week sounded pretty good. I definitely don�t have symptoms, plus I�d also like a break from seven months of chemo.

So she�s put me on tamoxifen pills, which have been successful in some women in terms of temporarily halting cancer growth�in other words, the cancer isn�t killed, but the number won�t go up, either. I was on these briefly when I first recurred, but they didn�t work. This time, I�ll be taking them longer (at least three weeks) and at twice the dosage, so maybe it will work (with my luck, I�m not expecting much). Three weeks from now, I�ll get another CA 125. The hope is that tamoxifen will buy me time so I can enjoy the summer (even if it works, it doesn�t work indefinitely). If the drug doesn�t work, we�ll play it by ear. My plan for now, whether I have symptoms or not, is to start the new drug Doxil by June 1.

This is bad news. I asked the doc whether this recurrence meant my cancer was more aggressive than we thought. She said it actually isn�t that unusual for ovarian cancer to come back at the end of chemo treatment like this. At the same time, given my very strong response, she was hoping we were looking at months � not just a couple weeks�of remission.

Now, we need to hope that Doxil proves more successful against the cells than Gemzar was. In the meantime, we�re trying to be hopeful and focusing on enjoying the arrival of spring. It's a pretty hard blow. Poet Emily Dickinson wrote the line "Hope is the thing with feathers" in one of her poems. I use that line in my book. yet I've never quite understood what it means. Tonight a potential meaning suddenly occurred to me: "That thing with feathers sometimes flies away."

The high point of today (not counting the two bottles of so-called berry flavor barium "smoothie" I had to drink for the test)was when I was in the chemo unit to get my port flushed, after we had gotten the results. There was only one other person in the unit--a petite Middle Eastern woman, hooked up to chemo across from me, surrounded by an entourage of guys who looked like sheiks (at Mayo, probably so). Anyway, she took one look at my tear-stained face and stared at me fiercely. When I finally felt her stare and looked at her, she smiled slightly and raised her hand in a tight fist. I smiled back and did the same. I knew exactly what she meant: "We are sisters, and you are strong. You can get through this."

After the nurse was done with me, I went over and clasped her hand. It was small and warm and dry. "Thank you," she said. "God is with you, too."

Love to all,

Meta

Thursday, March 29, 2007 3:12 PM CDT

Hi, all! Well, tomorrow is the BIG DAY�the day I get my CA 125 retested and have a CAT scan performed to determine whether the cancer has started growing back already or whether the rise to 13 was a fluke and I�m A-OK. (Hey, I�m A-OK anyway�it�s the f-ing cancer we�re not sure about). I get the tests at 9:30 and 10:15, then Mark and I will meet with the oncologist at 3:30 to get results.

To pass the time until our meeting, we�ll go to Fleet Farm (alas, our new favorite store) and start researching manure spreaders. You just wouldn�t believe how much 4 horses can poop, particularly when they keep to a tight area right around the hay bunk, as they did this winter.

It never ceases to amaze me how much our lives have changed!

Going back to the tests, I�m fairly confident that the rise was a fluke, although I can�t say I have any way to know, one way or another. I just hope I�m right! I�d dearly love to be able to provide an object lesson to the oncologist that every cancer patient is different, and that she shouldn�t jump so quickly to conclusions�plus, leave them anxious for the next three weeks.

Interestingly, when I went to my last ovarian cancer support group, the first question that I got was: �How can the doctor be sure that the cancer is back, based on just one small rise in the number? Aren�t you supposed to wait until the number doubles, and/or something shows up on the scan?� Anyhow, tomorrow, we�ll know. Please keep your fingers crossed for us.

If the cancer has recurred, I�ll start a new chemo regimen, Doxil, on Monday. Typically you get it once a month, over four months. The first time they drip it really slowly, so it takes about three hours, to help prevent an allergic reaction. After that, the infusions take about an hour. Doxil has enough side effects so that patients generally get an educational package and some tools, like ice bags, to help prevent hand-foot syndrome (see earlier post). Hey, a gift bag!!!!

If it turns out that the cancer has returned, I plan to get with a chemo nurse right after the appointment tomorrow, so we can pick up this package and I can be better prepared.

I have indeed been having a great time these past three weeks. Mark and I took a paddleboat up the river as part of an event to look for eagles fishing in open water (we saw 50!); we�ve started brushing the horses to get rid of their hairy winter coats; and we�ve begun clearing the woods back behind the house to make kind of a pretty grove to look out at (we may put a fire ring up there, too!). It�s been fun watching all the birds come back for the spring, including sand hill cranes, pelicans, turkey vultures, killdeer, house finches, meadowlarks, red winged blackbirds and bluebirds. Our pastures turn greener by the hour.

Last weekend, Mark�s ex-brother-in-law Steve and his new wife Tricia came for a visit and we took two two-hour hikes around our bluffs. And this morning, I met one of our neighbors at her house and we hiked her and our land together for three hours. Whew! In another week or so, the ground should be dry enough to ride the horses safely.

All for now. If you read this, please send tons of positive energy our way for the tests and results tomorrow. It will be OK either way, but I'd sure like a break. The fact is, once you get recurrent cancer, you just get used to life on a rollercoaster. That's our new "normal." All you can do is hang on tight and ride out the twists and turns as best you can.

Love to all,

Meta

Thursday, March 8, 2007 2:07 PM CST

Well, crap. And crap, and crap, and crap. We just got home from my monthly appointment with the oncologist, and it looks like the cancer may be growing back.

We don�t know anything definitive�and won�t until three weeks from now when I go back for tests. But at this point, there�s cause enough for concern. Needless to say, Mark and I are sad, and angry, and scared. Shoot, I was planning to stop treatment after the usual six cycles so I could start enjoying a chemo-free spring�Mark and I had planned to celebrate my last treatment this weekend. Crap, crap and more crap. I don�t know what else to say, other than "Why me?," which is getting a little old at this point.

Anyway, here�s the deal:

A month ago, my CA 125 went up slightly, from 7 to 8.3. The test�s margin of error is plus or minus 4, so this slight increase was negligible. Today, however, the CA 125 had risen again, to 13. There are a number of things that can cause a one-time rise in the number, including minor, undetected infections. As you know, I hurt my back badly three weeks ago, so I�m hoping that�s the cause of this.

But the doctor was concerned enough to recommend that I cancel today�s chemo, which we did. The thinking is that if the cancer is indeed coming back, that means the Gemzar didn�t work, so there�s no point in taking it again. Our impression is that the doc is pretty certain the cancer is coming back. Boy, how I'd love to prove her wrong!

Three weeks from now, on March 30, I�ll get another CA 125 and a CAT scan. It�s unlikely the CAT scan will show anything at this point. But if the CA 125 rises yet again, it means the cancer is back. It�s hard to imagine that this could happen after 11 toxic chemo infusions, but it�s also not all that unusual, according to the doctor.

Essentially, what it means is that the chemo failed to kill at least a few cancer cells, and that those have been resistant enough to start growing again. It boggles my mind that great big healthy me can't kill a few puny little cancer cells, but that't the core problem with cancer--your body's immune system doesn't recognize malignant cells as an enemy.

Anyway, if we go back in three weeks and the CA 125 has gone back down, we�ll have a big celebration and I will be back in remission. If the number is up again, I�ll start that day on a new chemo. The doc is recommending Doxil, a drug with few side effects except for the horrible �hand and foot syndrome��if you�re susceptible to this side effect, your hands and feet blister to the point where the skin peels off (weird, and not exactly conducive to horseback riding, canoeing/kayaking or hiking). Some people, however, are spared this side effect. I don�t know how often Doxil is administered, or how long each infusion takes�I�ll have to check my library of cancer books.

The good news is that the cancer growth likely will still be so low that if the Doxil works (a big �if�), it won�t be long until I�m in remission again.

Regardless of what happens, unless I�m sick as a dog, Mark and I WILL be following through with plans to visit his sister Cindy in Zambia, Africa, this August. She is the Peace Corps director there. If there's one lesson Mark and I have learned, it's this: Life is just too effing short to delay or defer your dreams and plans.

At this point, as we did when we went down to Mayo two years ago for diagnosis, Mark and I are expecting the worst, and hoping for the best. Shoot, we deserve a major break somewhere along the way!!! But that�s not the way ovarian cancer works. A member in my support group died just two weeks ago, and another member is running out of effective chemo options.

Please pray for us. We both plan to enjoy the hell out of the next three weeks, and I�ll update you as soon as we know.

Love you all,

Meta (and Mark)

Wednesday, February 28, 2007 2:12 PM CST

Oooph! The past two weeks have been a bit hard, healthwise. The first infusion in the sixth cycle went fine, as usual. But, thanks to the accumulated effect of so many treatments, I ended up wiped out on the third day�weak, exhausted, aching�what the Gemzar side-effects list calls �flu-like symptoms.� So I spent a couple of days in bed. Nothing tasted right (even water was bitter).

And, thanks to the white-cell-boosting shots, I had intermittent, throbbing pains in my bones. If you ignored the pain, it was actually kind of interesting, like being given my own up-close-and-personal anatomy lesson. Sometimes it would be the front of my skull, sometimes the whole skull, sometimes a thighbone or the breastbone, and my favorite�the entire ribcage. I had no idea the ribcage was so long, or curved so far down toward my waist, until now! Sometimes the pain was so bad that I involuntarily gasped and yelped�which I think was worse for Mark than me, because that intensity only lasted 10 or 15 seconds at a time. The good news is that I only have to give myself those shots at the beginning of each cycle. So that pain is behind me for now.

The bad news is, I�m having a heck of a time with my lower back. Two and a half weeks ago, on my way to do chores, I slipped on the outside steps going down to the garage from the house (glare ice, wouldn�t cha know), torquing my right knee and landing on my left side. It was one of those instances when you lay there and think, �Ow. Ow. Ow. This could be REALLY bad.� Turns out it wasn�t; after testing everything to make sure it still moved, I got up and was able to feed the animals after all, which is good, because Mark was out of town. (Strong warrior farm woman, that�s me.) So the next day, just for good measure, I slipped and fell at exactly the same spot again! This time, I whammed my back against the steps�it was just fortunate I had on my Michelin-Man, 40-degrees-below zero down parka for padding. Since then, I�ve been seeing a chiropractor and a masseuse, but the stiffness and pain isn�t going away. So I�ve made an appointment to see a family physician this afternoon, just to make sure something isn�t broken or really badly out of whack.

We received about 16-18 inches of snow here over the weekend; it�s been just beautiful out. Our neighbor came over Sunday afternoon with his big tractor to help Mark plow our big circular drive out�help that was much appreciated, given that our gator (a sort of utility four-wheeler), even with chains on the tires, kept getting stuck in the deep, wet, heavy snow. I enjoyed sitting in our living room, watching a very he-man demonstration of men-removing-snow, not to mention friendship in action.

Monday, I went back to Mayo to get the second chemo infusion in this cycle. Because it had snowed a bit more, Mark drove me, rather than me heading down there alone, which was an unexpected treat. The next infusion is March 8 (a delay of two weeks to let my body recover again), at which time the CA 125 level will be measured again. Depending on that number, how I�m feeling and the oncologist�s thoughts, we�ll decide at that time whether to do more cycles. Right now, I�m feeling less inclined to get more chemo, despite what I think are good reasons for doing so.

My back hurts and I�m just getting worn out. My hair has thinned a lot (I�ve thought of dying my scalp brown), my ability to track and remember things is absolutely shot, and I�m sick, sick, sick of chemo. I�ve been doing this since last September, three times a month. Plus, in case you can�t tell, I�m grumpy and tired of being laid up (which is mostly due to my back, not the chemo, I�m guessing). I can�t imagine how I�d feel if I were going through this, and remission were still in doubt. So that�s the very, very, very good news.

Plus, there�s this beautiful, beautiful healing environment all around me. One morning two weeks ago, our dog Maisie was raising a ruckus at the door to our back deck. I let her out, then noticed a large eight-point buck standing at the edge of the woods and our yard. The same day, I came home at dusk after running errands. Rain was predicted (ah, the vagaries of Minnesota weather!) and the sky was steel gray. As I stopped the car near the chicken coop to check for eggs, I noticed that the setting sun was bathing the entire ridge in front of me in gold. So there was this long gold ridge, with bright white birch trees, against this dramatic sky. What a way to bookend my day; both visions were absolutely spectacular. When I see things like this, I know that Mark and I are living exactly where we ought to be.

Love,

Meta

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 12:54 AM CST

Woo-hoo! I�m finally getting around to updating you! (And what a horrible correspondent I�ve been.) Anyway, next week I start on my sixth (and normally, last) cycle. My counts have been under 10 since Cycle 3, and I�m tolerating the chemo fairly well�altho it�s finally starting to get to me. (Why the heck wouldn�t it? It�s toxic, after all).

So I�m already in remission; even my oncologist said the magic word when Mark and I saw her last week! At the same time, the oncologist (being the soul of caution, as all medical professionals are) will not write �No evidence of disease on my chart� until I have the final round, and a CAT scan proves that I�m clean. Now, I can�t wait for it to warm up so that Mark and I can again spend tons of time outside, and for the footing to get better so we can start working and riding our horses again!

I said above that the sixth cycle would normally be my last. But I�m pushing the oncologist to give me an extra two cycles (I had to push fairly hard, asking at least three times during one meeting), and she finally said she will�providing I continue to tolerate the chemo fairly well. Here�s my thinking about eight cycles:

1)If I weren�t down in remission numbers by now, I�d be getting an extra two cycles anyway. So it�s not as if I�m taking a terrible risk. Plus the side effects so far are not anything that could cause permanent damage, as was the case with the last cocktail I was on.
2)Statistically, once you recur, you�ll recur again�and about twice as quickly as the first time. That means I could have just five or so cancer-free months before this insidious foe takes up residence somewhere in my abdomen again. (Crap, crap, crap.) Some studies have been done that involve giving patients extra cycles of a chemo drug following a six-cycle program that has resulted in remission�and for some patients, this �maintenance therapy� has extended their cancer-free time. Those studies have not involved Gemzar, the drug I get, and they have focused so far on people who have just had surgery and their first chemo program�that is, they have not yet recurred. So there�s no evidence showing that my getting another two cycles will make any difference. But what the heck, I figure it�s worth trying. I do NOT want to have the cancer recur a few months from now and think to myself, �Damn. I wish I�d asked for extra treatments.�
3)Finally, each cycle lasts a month. The sixth will take me through February; two more cycles would take me through the end of April. This timing means I�d likely get a full cancer-free summer and fall (no small consideration in frigid Minnesota, where you need to cherish the warm weather months) before the cancer would occur.

Looking at that last sentence, I�m struck by the weirdness of living with this cancer. I�m planning and scheduling around a possible recurrence much as other people plan around when their kids will and won�t be in school. With any luck, I�ll be one of the 2-3 percent of people who have a years-long remission after the first recurrence. I sure feel long overdue for a major lucky break! But it helps me stay balanced and to focus on what�s important by looking at the most likely scenarios, too.

Healthwise, the oncologist said that I�m one of the two healthiest patients she has (the other is 62 and goes hiking when weather permits). Right now, with temps below zero, I�ve limited myself to exploring local yoga classes (good, but expensive), cleaning house, filling our eight or nine birdfeeders scattered outside the living room, kitchen, back deck and my office, and lending a hand at outside chores. Mark mostly does the chores right now, but he�s been traveling for work a lot lately. So I�m getting my share, too!

After a lot of trail and error, I now get two infusions of chemo over two weeks, then one week off, then another infusion, then another week off, with the breaks designed to help my body tolerate Gemzar better. My side effects include thinning hair (not bad enough to shave it off yet); depression and anxiety (apparently typical of Gemzar, my fellow support group members tell me); two days of hyperactivity right after each chemo; and (the only serious side effect) plummeting white and red blood cell counts (also typical).

To deal with these problems, we�ve boosted my antidepressants, cut the steroids I get to fight an allergic reaction in half (I�m still antsy yet exhausted), and I give myself shots for five days following the first chemo to keep my white cells up. The good news is that my bone marrow still works like a trooper once it�s goosed. I need a neutrophil count of 1.3 (the infection-fighting white cells); last week it was 4.3, well above normal. I told our friend Scott that I could be dunked in a tank of e. coli and still be healthy! He asked, �Do the other patients get healthier just by sitting next to you?� Given this incredible response, next time around we're cutting the shots from 5 to 4.

I�m also continuing to redecorate our cozy farmhouse; as my friends know, decorating is one of my major passions. The other day I asked Mark if he knew why I was thinking about changing the mirror in the guest bathroom. His response was probably pretty accurate: �Because it�s there?�

A couple weeks ago, we replaced the small, rather formal fireplace surround with a new gas unit, a big faux stone mantel and surround, and cherry bookcases on either side to hold our books and electronics. We love it! It struck me after the stone was installed that it looks like it could have been quarried from the bluffs on our land; it has the same buff, gray and ocher tones (I was going to say �rust,� but �ocher� makes me sound like a fancy interior designer). It�s made an amazing difference in the rather large, vaulted-ceiling living room; it�s now like the soul and personality for the entire house.

The next project is the master bathroom, which is also right off the mudroom. It�s the only room we haven�t painted or made some sort of improvement to so far. It has a nice big shower, but I�ve long lusted after a deep tub with jets. So I�m gathering tile and linoleum samples--and greatly trying Mark�s patience when he trips over said samples in the middle of the night.

Living out here in the country continues to be a thrill and joy�although both of us admit that what with having fewer places to run errands, fewer things to do locally (ethnic restaurants, puh-lease!!) and the weather such as it is, cabin fever has definitely set in. But we�re working to remedy that by working (I�ve just started in again on my book), making plans to see friends from Minneapolis, and just trying to get out and meet more local people.

The tradeoffs are still definitely worth it. The birds are going crazy at the bird feeders, which is fun for us to watch, the horses continue to be entertaining (right now, I�m watching Mark from my office window as he gives each of the horses some loving-up�-yes, in -8 weather), and we never know what kind of wildlife we�ll see. We were walking in the woods in January when a barred owl swooped right over us and landed high up in a nearby tree. He studied us as intently as we did him; what a thrill to be so close to one of these reclusive, near-invisible birds! And the other day, we were driving home together when we finally saw Whitey, the famed white variation of a red-tailed hawk that lives in the valley near us. We�ve had our eye out for him for months. It was incredible. Mark stopped the truck so we could watch as Whitey soared in circles above us, red tips of wings and red tail, with his mostly white feathers gilded in the afternoon sun. I don�t think I�ve ever seen a bird so unearthly beautiful. I wish you could have been there.

All for now. Much love to everyone,

Meta

Wednesday, November 29, 2006 11:50 AM CST

Pheeeeew! The past couple of weeks have been broken up, and tiring, and trying, to say the least. The good news�Minnesota�s weather has been extraordinarily mild, which means Mark and I have been able to continue to spend a great deal of time outside enjoying the farm, and taking our horses out on our usual�and some new�local trails! On Sunday, Mark turned to me at one point and said, �What do you suppose we�d be doing right now if we still lived in Golden Valley?�

�I don�t know�sitting watching a TV show we�re not interested in, or running errands?�

Instead, we were riding our horses alone a high ridge a mile and a half from our home, watching the calves in a neighboring pasture trot curiously toward us as a hawk wheeled overhead.

Anyway, our recent challenges started a couple of weeks ago, when I went to Mayo early in the morning for the third gemzar treatment in as many weeks. You�ll remember I�m getting treatment each week for three weeks, then one week off. Then the cycle starts all over again. I had been dubious about getting treatments three weeks in a row�given that gemzar is supposed to knock down your white counts, I had had trouble with my white counts almost from the beginning during last year�s treatments�and my Mayo oncologist wanted to wait to see what happened before prescribing the white-count-enhancing shots I took last year again.

I suspected that my counts might be down, because I was getting easily fatigued and finding myself fairly breathless even when I walked to the barn from the house. So I wasn�t surprised when, after the required blood tests, the nurse told me I couldn�t have chemo that day�the neutrophil count (that is, the cells responsible for fighting off infections and bugs)�was too low. What WAS surprising was the number. Last year, when my third round of chemo was canceled, the count was 1.3�slightly under the 1.5-1.6 minimum threshold. This time, my count was just .5 (gulp!), a third what it needed to be. Upon hearing the number, I immediately thought back to my activities the previous week. Thank heavens that in my errands and socializing, I hadn�t been exposed to anyone with a bad cold or the flu!

Before leaving the Mayo chemo unit, I asked the nurses if they could contact my doctor and see if I could start getting Neulasta, the drug that boosts white count. No, the answer came back. The doctor wanted me to get my blood checked in another week, and see if the count was back to where I could get another round of chemo before my next appointment with her (and beginning of my fourth round of treatment) on Dec. 1. Bummer.

So back to Red Wing�and more medical challenges. My dad, who lives just 10 minutes away from us, had been passing blood in his urine. A scan at the VA in Minneapolis recently revealed a growth on his kidney. On the same day that I was supposed to get chemo, Mark had volunteered to keep Dad company on another diagnostic trip up to the VA.

With my chemo canceled, I called Mark and we took Dad up there together for more tests. We were supposed to get the results later. Three days later, on a Friday, Dad called in excruciating pain, said he was passing blood clots, and could one of us take him back to the VA? So up I went for another whole day of tests and treatment.

Monday, I went back with Dad to meet with a urologist. We were told he has kidney cancer. The good news: It�s extremely slow-growing, Dad is in a very early stage, and a new procedure will allow them to freeze the tumor without having to remove any of his kidney. The bad news: he�s 80, and the main caretaker for Marcia, his 68-year-old wife, who had a freak accident last year and is now a quadriplegic.

The surgery is scheduled Jan. 8.

The next day, Tuesday, I went to the clinic in Red Wing to have my blood counts tested. Still no go: The number had only risen to .8. I was sort of glad not to have to go back down to Mayo�with Thanksgiving in two days, and Mark�s kids and two of his sisters coming to stay overnight, I was looking forward to having at least Wednesday to regroup and for things to be �normal.� Ha!

Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, Dad again woke in terrible pain and Mark took him back to the VA to see what relief they could provide. They prescribed more painkillers and antibiotics for his bladder, which is suffering the effects of radiation for prostate cancer a couple of years ago.

Ok, God, so could you stop with the family health challenges now? Consider what�s happened to our family in the past year and a half:
March 2005. I was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer and had surgery and chemo. November 2005. Marcia, Dad�s wife, the personification of high energy, was rendered a quadriplegic the night before Thanksgiving, 2005, when she slipped in the bathroom and simply wrenched her neck (fracturing part of a spine weakened by arthritis).
July 2006. My cancer recurs, despite all highly positive signs pointing to a lengthy remission.
July-August 2006. Jill, Mark�s sister who lives in St. Paul, is diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer. She recently finished treatment, which shrunk the tumors in half. Her next tests are in three months, at which time they�ll make a decision whether to do additional treatment.
November 2006. My dad is diagnosed with kidney cancer.

Whew! I am sick, sick, sick of cancer. We�ve reached the point where cancer and serious health problems feel like the norm, rather than the exception. For good or bad, the �C� word doesn�t stop me cold: It�s become just another (if major and painful) life problem to deal with. Prognosis, neutrophils, all sorts of words have entered my everyday vocabulary. A couple weeks ago, when Dad and I were meeting with the oncologist at the VA, the doctor stopped at some point, after I�d asked yet another question, and said: �What kind of background do you have? You seem to understand all this really well.� Yep.

But all this takes an emotional toll: I guess I shouldn�t be surprised that I�ve felt shell-shocked and out of energy the past week or so. I�ve hit, and sometimes exceeded, my limit for unhappy developments to the people I love, and just plain bad news.

Yet despite all this, or perhaps because of it, I can honestly say I�ve never felt more blessed. I have nourishing, strong relationships with the people I love, and who love me; I�m still alive and grateful for every single day, and for my ability to handle these challenges and support the people going through them; and Mark and I have the continual joy and reward of living in this beautiful wooded valley, in an incredibly life-affirming place.

Like this morning. I was lounging around in my sweats (Mark�s turn to do feeding chores) when Mark stuck his head back in and said, �Hey, honey. Could you throw some clothes on and get out here? I need some help catching a chicken that got loose.�

I was completely charmed by this invitation�a new adventure! (It�s this attitude that separates us from lifetime farmers, I�m sure.) I envisioned us impotently chasing the escapee, hooting with laughter, while the barn cats watched.

So of course I was disappointed when I arrived down at the coop, brandishing some lettuce leaves as bait, to find out Mark had run Pebbles the chicken to exhaustion, hooked her by the neck with one of two handy chicken-catching poles we had inherited, and thrown her back into the coop.

Turns out, I was right about the adventure�after a few comically futile lunges at the chicken, Mark had thought, �This is something Meta�s going to want to take part in!� And I was also right about the cats�Mark said five of the eight barn cats lined up along the outside of the barn and sat down with great interest to watch the chump-chase-the-chicken show.

All for now. I go back to the doctor Friday to learn what effect the gemzar alone is having on my CA 125, to ask more about getting white-cell booster shots and to start the fourth cycle of chemo if my blood counts permit. (I think they�ll be OK by now�I�m sure Thanksgiving�s turkey and cranberries and dressing and WAY too much food was highly beneficial.)

For the first time in a long time, I�m very anxious about these results. No messages from my body or from God about what�s happening in there. Sometimes I think I have the human equivalent of buckthorn, an invasive tree that I have declared war against at our cabin�and now on our farm. It�s easy to cut down, but it�s a bitch to keep from growing back.

If the gemzar is not working, the doc will likely want me to go through one more cycle before abandoning it. Then we�ll try something else. Ultimately, it would mean more treatments with another drug that could cause greater side effects�and one less weapon in the arsenal we have to knock back this blasted disease.

Could someone please wake me up now, and this will all turn out to be a very weird, very bad dream? Execpt for moving to the farm, of course!

Please send your prayers and best energies that the CA 125 will be down, down, down. Mark�s sister Jill and his sister Cindy, who is visiting from Zambia (she�s the Peace Corps head there) will be staying overnight with us Friday. I�m hoping we have something to celebrate! If not�well, the cancer number still will be much, much lower than when I first recurred. And how bad can things be when you have a barnful of affectionate cats to love up and escape-minded chickens to chase around?

Love to all,

Meta

Friday, November 3, 2006 2:23 PM CST

Hi, all! I�ve been a terrible correspondent, which I can only blame on trying to enjoy Minnesota�s all-too-fleeting Indian summer outside (which mostly means riding, and riding, and riding!) while I�m feeling good.

Mark and I had (mostly) great news on Tuesday, when we met with the medical oncologist. As you may remember, I had an allergic reaction to the carboplatin part of my carboplatin- Gemzar combination last time. So the meeting was to see what my CA 125 has done, and to determine what drug I should be treated with now.

Much to both our astonishment, the CA 125 had dropped another 78 percent, taking it from 118 after the first chemo to 26 now!!! I was so excited that I grabbed the young student oncologist who first saw us by the arm (his fault�it was laying there next to me on the desk!) and shook it with glee. After he left to get my regular doc, I had a �proper� (or perhaps highly improper) celebration by leaping up from my seat next to Mark, jumping up and down and shouting �Yea! Yea! Yea!�). I was hoping for a number in the 40s, and Mark and I both had both agreed that even 60 would be very good. We knew it had to be improved, since I�m feeling so happy and well.

So, with 32-and-under being normal, my CA 125 is already back within normal range! I�m in a great position to go into remission again�with just one caveat. Unfortunately, it�s a big one�you�ll note that I said �mostly great� news above. This new CA 125 reading of 26 was the result of getting 17 minutes of carboplatin infusion (which abruptly halted when I had a reaction) and the usual 30 minutes of Gemzar, plus another dose of Gemzar a week later. So we don�t know how much of the drop was due to the carboplatin that I no longer can have, and how much is due to the Gemzar. So we don�t know how well I�ll respond to the new drug regimen that the doctor suggested, which puts kind of a shadow over the great result so far. But I know one thing�I�m starting from a MUCH stronger position than the reading of 867 a month and half ago. And I�m choosing to believe that that message I heard in my head�that everything will be all right�still holds true.

So anyway, since I�m already taking Gemzar, the plan is for me to continue receiving Gemzar by itself and see how that goes. To ensure the best possible result, my dose is being increased by 25 percent each time. And, instead of getting a half hour infusion once a week for two weeks, then a week off, I�ll be getting infusions for three weeks straight, with the fourth week off. The good news is that I�m tolerating Gemzar really well so far�some fatigue and weakness, and mild nausea for several days, but also the opportunity to be more active the last couple days of each week. I hope that continues to hold true!

The plan is to still have six cycles, which includes the two I�ve already completed. (I just started the third.) Depending on what the CA 125 number does, and how well I continue to tolerate the drug, I may get as many as eight cycles. Even if the number gets down to 5 after the six cycles (like it did when I was treated originally), I�m all for getting as much chemotherapy as makes sense, in an effort to make sure any stray cancer cells are totally decimated.

There�s no telling how well Gemzar will work for me�chemotherapy response is totally individual, based on the chemistry of one�s individual cancer cells. Some 20 to 30 percent of patients have a �positive response� to Gemzar, according to the doc�which means the cancer at least doesn�t grow, it�s reduced, or the patient ends up in remission. People who actually go into remission on Gemzar is somewhere between 8 and 11 percent, from the Internet research I�ve done. The doctor keeps reminding me that the cancer will almost certainly recur, based on statistics�and that the remission likely will be shorter this time. I know she�s trying to make sure I understand the prognosis, but it�s frustrating to hear her pretty much giving up on the chance of a cure or a loooong remission. For my part, I keep telling her that I�m young and basically healthy, I have a lot to live for, and I want all the help I can get from her to help me buck those odds.

So please keep your fingers crossed, and send prayers and positive energy that this toxic-yet-healing drug does its job and continues to kill every last cancer cell!

The past couple of weeks have been absolutely glorious. We�ve had a number of friends/family visit and/or stay overnight (which means hiking the bluffs, eating well and visiting the horses and cats). We�ve also gone into Minneapolis to have dinner with friends there. The trails across our neighbors� properties and on the state land are not to be believed; they�re an awesome mix of heavy woods, steep climbs and vast, rolling meadows. We regularly see hawks and wild turkeys, plus a lot of deer sign. Mark and I rode three or four days straight last week, exploring and continuing to develop strong, positive relationships with our horses. For animals that have never been trail-ridden before, they�re both doing awesome�even bushwhacking calmly through heavy, heavy brush and over downed branches in instances where a trail has run out. It�s a strong testament to the time we spend grooming them and just giving them attention, and how much they�ve come to trust us, that they do this for us with no fuss.

Mark�s enjoying the novel experience of being able to deer-hunt without ever leaving our land. He has a number of stands and blinds set up on our eastern bluff, and is learning a ton about the secrets of bow-hunting, which he�s never done before. He hasn�t put a deer on the ground yet, but he�s seen a lot of prospects; they were just slightly too far away, or his shot was blocked by a tree or brush. Plus there�s the reward of being up there before dawn, listening to the woods coming alive around him. This morning, he was rewarded with hearing a coyote bark somewhere not too far away, which was answered by the excited yips of a number of pups she had apparently called. Gosh, we�re so lucky!

One of the biggest blessings has been our neighbors and the previous owners of our farm. As Mark says, �We haven�t just been welcomed; we�ve been embraced.� Karen, one of the previous owners, has been extremely complimentary about the changes we�ve made to the inside of the house, which makes us feel good. And she�s invited me to several activities�which unfortunately, the chemo schedule so far has interfered with.

In just the last week and a half, one neighbor invited Mark over to help him butcher a deer (I know some of you may be wincing, but that�s exciting for us!) and to offer him a lot of great tips on successful bow-hunting; another neighbor invited us over for sloppy joes at a kids� event they were holding; and still a third called to tell us to ride her trails any time, to offer us some horsemanship DVDs she has, and even to drive them over to us. After we got four loads of rock dumped on our circle drive last week, our neighbor across the road unexpectedly showed up on his tractor, at 8 at night, in the dark, to evenly distribute the rock for us. We are SO incredibly blessed and lucky.

All for now. I�ll try to do a better job keeping you updated. Good bless you all, and thanks so, so much for your care and support.

Love,

Meta

Tuesday, October 10, 2006 9:00 AM CDT

Well, phooey. The visit to Mayo and the chemotherapy yesterday gave us another ride on the rollercoaster. We had really good news, which we celebrated. And we had what right now seems like really bad news. We both cried.

First, the blood test and the meeting with the medical oncologist to see how the chemo was working. Last week, I was driving to an errand and thinking about chemo when I was suffused with a sense of pure peace, joy and well-being. I could feel my body (or God?) telling me, �You have nothing to worry about. The chemo is working.� Weird, I know, and I�ve only had these �communications� since I�ve had cancer. (I haven�t talked about them before here, because they seem so woo-woo New Age-y). Anyway, I went home and told Mark about my experience, and said that we could expect a CA 125 of around 100�not the aggressive drop from 867 to 200 that I had already begun hoping for.

So 4 hours after the blood draw, we met with one of the medical oncologists (not my regular one; she was out) and got the blood test results. First, she gave us the red cells. They were down enough to be causing fatigue and potential shortness of breath. I�d get a shot immediately after the chemo session to get them up to acceptable levels, she said. Neutrophils, the white cells that fight infection, were borderline safe for giving me chemotherapy. If it goes down any further (and trust me, it will), the next chemo will get delayed by a week to allow them to recover, and then I�ll get a shot to stimulate white cell production. This is exactly what happened after my second treatment the first time around.

Then, FINALLY, FINALLY, she moved down the page of the results to the CA 125 level. 118! Almost a 75 percent drop from the previous level!! Mark and I hugged and turned to the oncologist. �This is very good news, isn�t it?� �Yes,� she said, �your cancer responded very well to the platinum (carboplatin) regimen last time, and it�s apparently just as sensitive this time around. Usually, we don�t see a response like this for recurrent cancer after just the first treatment; it takes a while for the number to start dropping�if it�s going to. This is a very gratifying response.�

When Mark asked, she said this initial result made it more likely I will need only 6 chemo cycles, and not eight. She also said she�d cancel the CAT scan for next time, because a CA 125 number this low already provided us with a good picture of how the cancer was being affected.

Mark and I hugged again in the waiting room. �Thank God for carboplatin,� I said. �Maybe I�d get a good long remission, or even a cure this time around!�

It�s really good news, honey,� Mark said. �I�m really relieved.� The bottom line, we could both stop worrying about whether this treatment would work, or if I�d have to go the other second-line drugs, which tend to be less effective than platinum cocktails.

And then . . .
We got to the chemo unit (a bed again!), I took some steroids and benadryl orally to help prevent allergic reactions, and got infused with the gemzar for a half hour. Then I was hooked up to the 30-minute bag of carboplatin.

We had been told during the first chemo that people who have carboplatin as their first-line treatment sometimes develop a sensitivity to the drug the second time around. (Like sensitivity to wasp stings after having been stung multiple times.) This sensitivity usually shows up during the second chemotherapy of the second-line treatment. The nurse reminded me of this, and said the first sign of an allergic reaction is usually red, rashy, intensely itching palms. So I should ring her immediately if this or something else unusual occurred, and they�d put me on a benadryl drip. OK. So Mark was out getting an anti-nausea prescription for me (would you believe $1400 for a month�s supply! Thank good I have drug coverage) and I was dozing when the insides of my ears begin to itch. Maybe it�s the power of suggestion; I�m expecting to itch, so I do. Then, within a couple of minutes, it progressed to my crotch. My back, ribs and waistline. The inside of my throat started itching. I checked, and there was no rash on my body with the itching. Mark returned and I asked him if I looked weird. �Your ears and one side of your face are a little red.� OK, so it wasn�t my palms, and I didn�t have a rash, but this definitely counts as unusual. I rang for the nurse, who came running. I told her I thought I might be having a reaction. She checked for rashes (nothing) and called another nurse, who came immediately. �I think we need to treat it as an allergic reaction,� she said. By this time my throat felt like it was closing and (Mark reported) my face and ears were beet-red. I had a pounding headache.

The second nurse hustled back with the head nurse, who was brandishing bags and needles, and they shot some benadryl into my IV. They unplugged the bag of carboplatin, and replaced it was a half-hour drip of benadryl as the three nurses watched me closely.

�Well, no more carboplatin for you,� the first nurse said. �Oh, can�t you just make sure the reaction is over and that I get enough benadryl, and then plug me back in?� I asked. �There�s only 12 more minutes to go on that drip, and this seems like what�s driving my cancer down so well. Or how about a more dilute solution?�

�Not today,� the nurse said firmly. �This happens once in a while, maybe in about half our patients, and it�s not good. In fact, your doctor probably will not order this for you again.�

WHAT!! The wonderful, magical carboplatin? We knew there might be a reaction, but we didn�t realize it could mean terminating use of this drug�we had just thought it meant getting more benadryl. We asked if the oncologist could come back and talk to us, so we�d have an answer�and if carboplatin was out of the picture, what other treatment she might recommend. In the meantime, I felt the deep sleepiness caused by benadryl flowing over me, and the symptoms slowly going away.

The oncologist, Dr. G, came in about 15 minutes later. It was clear that the nurses told her I still wanted carboplatin, if at all possible. �There�s just no way we can do that�or treat you with any other of the platinum-based drugs, ever. This is a very dangerous drug and a very dangerous reaction; we�ve seen it enough so we know the consequences. If we try it again, you run the serious risk of a stroke, a heart attack, respiratory arrest, a number of other life-threatening problems. We just can�t take that risk.� (She said this in various forms three times over 5 minutes, just to make sure I got the message. All right, already!)

So what now? She said that we would finish out this cycle as planned, with another round of gemzar next week (provided my white blood cells cooperate) and then a week off. Then I�d meet with my regular oncologist, look at blood results and chemotherapy options, and decide on a treatment going forward. Dr. G said that if it were she, she�d probably try gemzar by itself, since I�m already on it. She said we have no proof that the carboplatin is solely responsible for my CA drop, and that the gemzar could be making a big contribution as well. Plus, she added, cancer that is sensitive to platinum tends to be sensitive to many of the other second-line drugs as well.

In other words, bye-bye to our new-found sense of confidence and excitement. Back to our original uncertainty and chemotherapy�s own form of russian roulette, only this time we�re twirling the gun barrel in search of the magic, cancer-killing bullet. The Internet research I�ve done on medical sites generally indicates that gemzar isn�t especially effective alone, but does work fairly well in combination with other drugs. The bottom line, though: Any of these drugs have, at best, a 12-30 percent positive response in patients, meaning that for a given drug, a maximum of 30 percent of patients will at least have no cancer progression while they�re on the drugs. Remission rates are generally in the single digits. So, we�ll see. I�m tough, I�m determined, and I�ll do everything in my power to make sure the cancer finds my body an unacceptable place to live.

There IS some good news in this, though. I�ve now received 1.5 infusions of carboplatin, which is putting a major dent in the cancer. I feel more hopeful trying a new drug with the CA 125 at 118 or lower-- rather than having to knock the number down from 867. So I�m starting out in a stronger position to beat the cancer. Plus, it was already clear that carboplatin was going to make me sicker than a dog this time around. So maybe whatever new regimen I go on will enable to feel a little better�Mark and I have a lot of riding, hiking, trail-cutting and animal-loving to do. While I have this steroid high, in fact, that�s exactly what I plan to do today!

Plus there�s still that mess of boxes waiting to be unpacked in the basement.

All for now, folks. Next time, I�ll tell you about the wonderful weekend we had with Mark�s daughter, Megan. Please keep sending your energy, prayers and love. I can feel them, and I know they help.

God bless you all,

Meta

Wednesday, October 4, 2006 8:53 AM CDT

Whew! Back to the ups and downs of chemotherapy. Already, it�s proving to be a learning experience all over again.

Here�s the deal: When I was diagnosed last year, I received 4.5 hours of carboplatin/Taxol once every three weeks�which pretty much laid me flat for the first week. So this time, I get one hour of carboplatin/gemzar the first week (a half hour of each), and a half hour of gemzar the second week, then one week off. Because my overall dose is smaller�and because I�m not starting chemo three weeks after major surgery, as I did last time�I didn�t expect to be as wiped out. Makes sense, right?

Boy, was I wrong. After the first, almost normal day (fueled by the steroids, no doubt), I spent the first whole week in bed�sleeping non-stop the first three days, then sleeping and lolling around and feeling like someone who has really bad flu. As usual, I had nausea (barely controlled with heavy drugs) and terminal constipation, to the point that I was occasionally doubled over in pain. Plus, this time I immediately had a nasty taste in my mouth that made eating difficult (this IS unusual for me!) and my gums and tongue were sore. It was pretty discouraging, given that it�s been beautiful fall weather and I want to spend it outside�riding my horse, cutting trails with Mark, playing with the cats. Before I could recover from this first round, I went to Mayo to get the second. One more sort-of-normal-steroid-boost day, then three more days in bed. Yuck!

But there�s good news, as well. Like last time, I have to believe that anything that makes big, healthy me this sick has to be wreaking havoc on those tiny, defenseless little cancer cells. Plus, my energy came roaring back in full by Sunday. I�m almost drunk with the sheer joy of feeling almost normal, and having energy to do the things I want to do. Plus, my appetite is HUGE!

We had friends/family stay both Friday and Saturday nights, then went to a musical in St. Paul on Sunday with Dad, my stepmom Marcia and her family. When we got back from this matinee Sunday around 5:30, I still had plenty of energy. So we hiked to the top of one of our two steep bluffs (with LOTS of stops for me to catch my breath-whew!) just in time to watch a glorious sunset. It was heaven. We�re sitting high up on a rocky outcropping, with the original native prairie grass and wildflowers nodding in the breeze around us, watching the last rays of sun kiss the blazing gold and red autumn leaves on the bluffs that surround our place. Mark even spotted a hawk cruising 20 or 30 feet below us. We couldn�t possibly live in a more wonderful place for communing with nature. I�ve said to Mark that our farm is like a dream come true�except I wouldn�t have dreamed big enough to include some of the best features of where we live.

One of those features are all the wonderful trails that surround us. Up the road a quarter of a mile is state land, with a long trail up to the top of a ridge, long rolling meadows that are perfect for riding horses, and a trail down the other side that wends its way through magnificent oaks along a steep ravine. We discovered this trail a week or so ago, when I was on a steroid high and had (barely) enough energy to ride. As we approached the trail, a dozen wild turkeys spilled down the hill below us to take cover in the woods. On the way back, a sharp-shinned hawk swooped right over our heads. I was shaking with exhaustion when we got back, but it was definitely worth it!

Yesterday afternoon, we took the trail that starts back behind our two pastures. The trail belongs to our neighbor Dave and Anne, who bought the 200 acres behind our land 8 years ago. With the exception of their house and yard, they�ve left the land to its natural state. We�re invited to use the trail any time. And the trails Mark has begun cutting will tie into this trail, so the neighbors have access to our two bluffs, too.

The trail begins in heavy woods, and meanders up a beautiful wooded valley to a huge grassy meadow. From there, the trail continues up to their house, and out to a small, private road. The road is along the top of a ridge and offers beautiful, long-range vistas of the bluffs that surround the Mississippi River and Lake Pepin. Usually, we scare up bluebirds when we ride along here. If we like (and we DID like yesterday), we can ride down this road a bit to our other neighbors, Brad and Martha, who have also let their 100 acres stay wild, except for a loop trail around the perimeter. We�re also invited to ride here. Suffice it to say, it was a perfect, perfect, perfect ride.

While we were saddling up, a battalion of a dozen vultures started soaring gracefully overhead. Birds of prey are my personal totem, so any time one appears near me, I gladly accept it as a blessing! Once we arrived home and started unsaddling, three of the previously wild barn cats came out to greet us and to observe, with great interest, what these humans were doing. It�s so nice feeling that you�re endlessly fascinating to someone, you know?

One of the great pleasures about living here is the relationship we have with our horses. For me, it�s the renewal of a lifelong love affair. For Mark, it�s a totally new discovery�and one that he�s enjoying even more than whitewater, so far! One of the main reasons we moved to the farm is so I could have horses again�I grew up riding bareback on my parents� hobby farm, later learned to jump, and finally, in my late 20s, had a young Saddlebred gelding that I showed English pleasure. So in early May (before I knew I had recurred), I started looking for another Saddlebred. I love Saddlebreds because they�re so tall and elegant and endlessly curious and affectionate. They also can be a handful, which I also like. I wanted a young gelding, 7 or under, so he would be somewhat of a challenge, and also so I�d have him for a really long time.

I didn�t have to look very far! I found a Saddlebred breeder south of Minneapolis who had taken back a 6-year-old gelding named Leinie�s Red after the person she sold it for a show horse said she thought the horse was unmanageable and unsafe. The breeder was all too glad to take him, she told me. She had raised Leinie from birth and knew him to be sweet but lacking confidence. He was young, so he WAS a handful for the previous owner. Because this owner wasn�t a very good rider, she tried to control him by using an extremely harsh bit, which scared the bejesus out of Leinie. Also, because this person wasn�t a good rider, and was scared of being thrown from him, she hit him with a whip every time he shied�absolutely the wrong this to do when the horse is scared anyway. Anyway, after understanding Leinie and what he had been through, I tried riding him in the softest bit possible and was as gentle and encouraging as I could be. It was love for both of us at first ride.

He�s just perfect�he makes my heart soar just to look at him. He�s very tall, lean and elegant, the color of a new penny, with a small white star and white socks on his back feet. He loves people and has a big, courageous heart. He�s always been ridden in show rings, so taking this timid fellow out on trails is asking a lot of him. (It surprises people that such big animals can be timid, but they basically think like the prey animals they are. They want to be safe, and with a herd. Any little new thing, like a junked tire in the ditch or a downed log along the side of the trail, can be perceived as a major threat.)

Leinie still gets pretty anxious (mostly evident by how quickly he breaks into a sweat), but he�s got a lot of sense and is willing to try just about anything I ask him to do. I�m so proud at how he�s coming along!

To keep Leinie company (horses don�t like being alone), we had arranged to board two more horses for friends of the previous owners of the farm. They�re just a wonderful couple, and we have the added benefit that Mark has been able to ride the younger of their two horses (an 18-year-old Arab) any time he likes. So he�s been familiarizing himself with riding, and realizing how much fun it is to have a personal, trusting relationship with a horse-- where the horse looks forward to seeing you and is willing to try what you ask him to do.

Anyway, long story short, three weeks ago we saw a horse advertised that sounded just perfect for Mark. We drove to see her, tried her out�and Mark now has his own horse! Tina is a 14-year-old Tennessee Walker, a breed known for its smooth, flowing running walk. (It takes the place of the bone-jarring trot most horses have, giving Mark an incredibly comfortable ride.) She�s jet black, with a white strip down her face, and an incredibly long, thick, flowing main and tail. She�s a bit shorter than Leinie but beefier�Mark says she looks like a medieval charger when she gallops across the field. Neither of her previous owners gave her much attention, so she ended up aloof and kind of hard to catch. Already, Mark can just walk up to her in the field with no problem. And she�s doing as well as Leinie in terms of trying new things that scare her. And I can see Mark�s horsemanship skills getting stronger by the day. We�re having just a ton of fun with them.

I�ve probably rattled on long enough for now. My next chemo cycle is next Monday, at which time I�ll get my first CA 125 to see how the new drugs are affecting the cancer. We�ve been told not to expect much�that, indeed, sometimes the number will actually go up the first time as a result of all the irritation the chemo is causing. But I�m optimistic. For one thing, some frequent pain I was having in my left lower abdomen is completely gone. I�m hoping to hear that the number, which was 867 before chemo, is down to 200. That would seem like a reasonable response, giving that it went from 1780 to 82 after the first chemo last time. But who knows? Nothing is reasonable or fair about this disease. All I can do is focus on assisting my body in beating the cancer�and enjoying every minute of life as fully as I can. And I am!

Wish us much luck, and continue sending prayers and positive energy. We�ll have to get some pix of the farm, us and the horses up on the website. Maybe this weekend? Love to you all,

Meta

Tuesday, September 19, 2006 6:59 PM CDT

Hi, all! I�ve been WAAAY behind in providing updates�first, because there was nothing much to report (i.e., good three-month checkups, life mostly as usual), and then, suddenly, because there was so much to report that I didn�t quite know where to start.

So here goes: I have bad news, and I have good news. The bad news is pretty bad: The cancer has recurred, unfortunately before the two-year remission mark that�s considered a good sign. The first symptom developed in May, and it was confirmed in June�meaning the cancer was in remission for 11 months. I started chemotherapy yesterday. More about all this below.

The good news, on the other hand, is spectacular. A bout with a life-threatening illness can really help clarify exactly how you want to live life. Mark and I realized our dream was to have a 40-acre wooded acreage we could retire to in five years or so, somewhere near either Mayo Clinic in Rochester or the U in Minneapolis (in the event that I recurred). We�re both major nature lovers, Mark wanted land where he could hunt, and I really wanted to be able to have horses�I started riding bareback when I was 11, and was an active horsewoman until my 30s.

So, anyway, we started looking casually, and put the word out to a couple of realtors what we were looking for. In early April, we checked out a place near Red Wing (an hour from Mayo, 1.5 hours from Minneapolis) that had just been listed and that sounded perfect�except it already had a house, barn, chicken coop, etc. Much to our immense surprise, we fell in love within a half-hour, made an offer, put our house on the market and sold it within a breathtaking nine days (in a terribly down market, yet!), and took possession of the farm July 31. It apparently was meant to be! It�s in a small valley, tucked between two heavily wooded bluffs that we also own. We absolutely love the place: At least once a day, we both say out loud how lucky we are to be living in the midst of this wild, wooded beauty. As I write this, I look out my window and see Mark petting our two horses in the pasture. More about this later as well.

Anyway, back to the cancer. As recently as last March, my three-month checkup showed a CA 125 measurement of 5, far below the 32 level. Given my (relatively young) age, my overall good health, and how quickly the chemo had eliminated the cancer, both my doctor and I were pretty confident that I�d have a long remission. I was even beginning to think I�d be one of the 20 percent who are cured. Then, in May, I developed what I thought was a bladder infection (I�ve had them before). When the tests were negative, we had my CA 125 tested. I was stunned when I got the call�it was up to 42. The oncologist wondered if perhaps it had risen because of some other kind of infection�so we tested it again a week later. It was 54. She was sure at this point that the cancer had recurred. I, on the other hand, was so unprepared and so had been expecting a longer remission, that I held out hope that maybe something else weird was going on.

When I was doing all my research during the initial treatment, I never looked much into recurrence or how it is treated. The first thing I learned in talking to the oncologist (and doing additional research, of course), is that unlike the initial diagnosis, when time is of the essence, it doesn�t matter terribly if you wait several months to treat a recurrence. In fact, the longer the time between your last chemotherapy and your new treatments, the more time your body has to recover. Plus, if you decide to use the same treatment, the more likely the cancer is to respond. I did NOT want to have chemo so soon�it still seems like I just finished the last one. Plus, I wanted to be able to move to the farm and enjoy it for a month or so if at all possible.

So I suggested that we wait until July 11, when my regular three-month checkup had been scheduled, to see what was going on. The oncologist agreed with this strategy, and said we might try using Doxil this time, a chemotherapy that is much less toxic and would give me a better quality of life while I was undergoing the treatments.

So, Mark and I went back to the oncologist in July. This time, my CA 125 was 123. In the meantime, I had read up on recurrence and was ready with questions. The second thing I had learned in my research is that there IS no standard drug for treating ovarian cancer recurrence. There are more than a dozen to choose from, but because people�s cancer cells are so individual, it�s pretty much a guessing game what might work�or for how long. Ovarian cancer is nasty and aggressive; once it recurs, it is less likely to respond to any type of treatment. The length of remission may be just a few months�or if you�re really lucky, maybe a year or two. I know women in my support group who have never had a remission since their first recurrence; the doctors just keep trying new drugs � with chemo �vacations� in between to allow the patient to recover�in an attempt to at least keep the cancer at bay. Average life expectancy after recurrence is somewhere between 18 months and 4 years.

So having recurred is pretty horrible news. In fact, this has been harder for both Mark and me than the original diagnosis. Then, I had an 80 percent chance of the chemotherapy being successful. And if I had a very strong response, I stood a good chance of a long remission�or even a cure. Now, who knows? There are two things I�m focusing on: First, to treasure each day I have, and to do what I love insofar as I�m able; and second, to do everything in my power to be in the 1 or 2 percent who have a very long remission (or maybe a cure???) after treatment for recurrence. That�s what I�m shooting for.

Which meant, first, moving my healthcare to Mayo. We met with a medical oncologist in late July, after a battery of tests. A medical oncologist is someone who specializes exclusively in chemo�unlike the oncologists at the U, who do both surgery and treatment. My thought was that someone who does only chemo might be more apprised of new and experimental treatments. The tests showed that the CA 125 had risen to 242; the CAT scan showed scattering of small tumors between my diaphragm and liver, and a bit on my colon. I asked the doc about Doxil, which is one of the most effective second-line drugs, with a 23 percent positive response rate (which means remission occurs, the tumors shrink, or at least the cancer didn�t grow).

She suggested, instead, that we return to carboplatin and Taxol, the drugs I had the first time around. If your first remission lasts more than six months, then the cancer is judged to be sensitive to carboplatin, which makes it a good second-line treatment. Plus, my very strong response would seem to suggest that it would work well this time around.

Mark and I agreed with the strategy. And having just bought a farm 3 years ago herself, she heartily agreed that I could safely wait until mid-September to begin chemotherapy.
Which brings you up to date�almost. In late July, about the first time we met with the oncologist at Mayo, the FDA approved a new second-line (i.e., recurrence) treatment for ovarian cancer that combines carboplatin (the drug I was on the first time) with Gemzar, a drug that is used successfully for liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer and some sarcomas. The doc suggested that we switch to this combination, and I agreed (after, of course, getting on the Internet and looking up the clinical trial results, Here�s what I found:

In the studies that led to the FDA approval, 356 women received carboplatin plus Gemzar, and another group received carboplatin alone. Results showed a 48 percent improvement in what�s called �progression-free survival��the time before the disease begins to worsen. In these trials, that translated to 8.6 months without cancer progression on Gemzar/carboplatin, compared with 5.8 months for carbo alone. Remission rates more than doubled�14.6 percent compared with 6.2 percent. Finally, 47 percent of patients had a positive response on the Gemzar combination, compared with 31 percent for carboplatin alone. Hey, I know these numbers aren�t super. But carboplatin worked for me before, and adding something different gives me a lot of hope.

So here we are. Once again, I�m on a three-week cycle, with some differences: An hour of chemotherapy the first week consisting of both drugs, a half hour of Gemzar the second week, and then a week off before the cycle starts again. The biggest side effects are reduced white and red blood counts and fatigue. I had almost no reaction to the drugs today, other than being a little less hungry, presumably because I�m getting smaller doses over two weeks. It was great�I went out and petted the horses twice, went into town for lunch with Mark, and played with the eight barn cats we inherited. But I�ll likely feel worse during subsequent treatments, like last time, as the drugs wear my body down.

I�ll do either 6 cycles of this regimen (like last time) or 8, depending on how well the cancer responds. My CA 125 was 867 when we started yesterday (I had anticipated at least 1,000, so this was OK), I�ll get it measured every three weeks�and if it isn�t working after the second cycle, we�ll look at doing something else.

All for now�this update is already much too long, and I appreciate your patience. Please, please pray for me and send positive energy my way. Your support and messages meant so much last time�and I really believe they were part of my super response. God bless you all,

Love,
Meta and Mark
(plus all the animals�too numerous to name here!)

Tuesday, January 31, 2006 11:21 AM CST

Hi, all! I've been a terrible correspondent--too busy with the holidays and my book about this cancer journey. And this is just a brief update; I'll be sure and add more within the week, especially about the book and how it's going.

In the meantime, I had my three-month checkup and CA 125 cancer marker level checked in December. Normal is 5-34, to refresh your memory. When I finished chemo in August, I was somewhere between 5 and 8. I fully expected this number to go up with the December test. After all, who knows what is "normal" for me specifically? Plus, it seemed to me that chemo could have artificially suppressed this number. So I told Mark not to freak out if it had risen up to 15, because that's what I was anticipating.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the number remained at 5!!! Hoo-wooo! Go, Warrior Woman, go! The next three-month exam will be the beginning of March--almost a year since my March 18 surgery and diagnosis. I'll continue to be tested every three months until I'm two years out,which is the period during wwhich advanced ovarian cancer is most likely to occur.

Most studies I see about improving results talk about extending the remission period from 18 months to 24, or from 16 to 28. So that says to me that recurrence can happen pretty quickly. Indeed, I recently talked to a woman whose daughter already had recurred at the her first three-month checkup! So I'm oh-so-grateful for every three months I can get.

My real reason for checking in right now, other than a New Year's resolution and burgeoning guilt, is that a friend wrote me yesterday and asked me to take a look at an e-mail she had gotten about ovarian cancer, its symptoms and how to detect it. She made me realize that I haven't done a very good job providing info on those subjects. So the following is what I wrote to her. God bless, I hope this helps, and thank you all again for your love, encouragement and support. I'm really not sure I'd be in remission if it weren't for all the support I received from you along the way.

Meta

**********

Hi, Deb, and I�m SO flattered you asked about ovarian cancer detection. The e-mail you forwarded to me is partly right, but incomplete and potentially misleading. As someone diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer a year ago�and who is now writing a book about it�here is what your friends need to know.

Ovarian cancer affects 1 in 57 women; most cases occur in women in their 50s and 60s. (I was 52.) However, it can also occur in women as young as their 20s. It�s called the �silent killer� because its symptoms are very subtle and are often misdiagnosed until it reaches an advanced stage. There also are no standard tests for this: a PAP smear does NOT detect ovarian cancer, and only 1 in 5,000 cases is identified through a pelvic exam. The earlier the cancer is caught, the better the long-term prognosis. Unfortunately, 75 percent of women with advanced cases�regardless of their treatments�die within two to five years. I�m planning on beating those odds. Pray for me!

Here are the symptoms, from mnovarian.org, an excellent website people should read for more information. The first three are the most commonly reported.

Increased waist line
Abdominal pain, pressure or bloating
Abnormal changes in bowel or bladder patterns

Persistent digestive problems
Excessive fatigue/backache
Abnormal post menopausal bleeding
Pain during intercourse
Weight gain or loss
Change in appetite

I had bloating and frequent urination�symptoms that I went to the doctor for within the first month. I also began having a weird watery discharge and twinges in my lower abdomen that were different than menstrual cramps. Finally, I had an extremely heavy �period� after going six months without any. Because I was perimenopausal, I figured it was just a last period rather than abnormal bleeding. At the time, I didn�t know much about ovarian cancer; I certainly wasn�t aware that these were classic symptoms.

Most internists seem to be only slightly better informed. In fact, I�m part of a team of ovarian cancer survivors who have volunteered to talk to doctors as part of continuing ed so they�ll be more aware and more likely to take a patient seriously who has these symptoms.

I was extremely lucky. The doctor tried to brush my symptoms off as menopausal, but the bloating was unique and increasingly uncomfortable. My stomach was round and hard. So I insisted on further testing, and thank heavens, she ordered an ultrasound rather than figuring it was something digestive and having me see a gastroenterologist. Because the symptoms are vague, it typically takes four months after the woman goes to the doctor to have ovarian cancer correctly diagnosed. Because I wouldn�t take �no� for an answer, I went from the first visit to surgery and diagnosis in three weeks.

So here�s what women need to do. If you have these symptoms, and they persist, run to the nearest doctor and insist, absolutely insist on two things:

1) Get a CA 125 blood test. This is a simple blood test that detects a type of protein excreted by ovarian cancer cells. Unfortunately, it�s not conclusive in itself, and this is why it�s not part of standard physicals�altho I sure wish to hell that it were. The normal CA 125 level is 5 to 34. An elevated level MAY indicate a problem, but not always. I say �may� because endometriosis and other benign problems can cause an elevated CA 125 as well�what�s called a �false positive.� There also are numerous women who have �false negatives.� In other words, they can have advanced ovarian cancer, yet their CA 125 never rises above 10 or 15. I know some of these women. (In my case, the number was 9,000, so a test during my annual physical�seven months before I had these symptoms--would really have helped.)

I understand this test isn�t too expensive. Knowing what I know now, I�d ask for this test during every annual physical after I reached age 50. If there is a history of ovarian or breast cancer, you�re at somewhat greater risk. Pay for the test yourself if you have to. The test isn�t conclusive in itself, but it COULD point to something wrong.

2) Get a vaginal ultrasound. This ultrasound PLUS the CA 125 test are the only way to determine whether someone may have ovarian cancer. The procedure entails inserting a wand into the vagina to allow the radiologist to �see� the reproductive organs. The only prep required is to drink a lot of water ahead of time (a full bladder makes it easier to �see� the organs for some reason). My test showed that a mass had �replaced� one ovary, according to the report.

Even at this point, the mass could be the result of something weird but benign. If you have the symptoms above, this is less likely. The only way to make a diagnosis is for a specialized surgeon to open the abdomen and see what�s happening. In my case, the surgery found two large tumors on my ovaries and two on my colon, plus thousands of little ones scattered throughout my abdomen. Those are all gone now, thanks to chemo, and I�m presently in remission.

Finally, if ovarian cancer is even a possibility, insist on getting your surgery done by what�s called a gynecologic oncologist�a specialist in reproductive cancers. Unlike either OB-gyns or regular surgeons, they have the expertise to remove all possible cancer without further spreading the malignancy. Additionally, they have the knowledge to �stage� the disease�determining exactly how advanced it is, from Stage I A to IV C. I was III-C, which means it had spread throughout the abdomen but not beyond. In Stage 4, the lungs, liver and/or heart are involved. Staging is important because it helps the doctors determine what type of follow-up treatment is needed. Six to eight rounds of chemo are the typical follow-up for more advanced or fast-spreading cancer. Several studies show that the quality of your first surgery�and specifically, whether a gynecologic oncologist performed it �is the single biggest factor in long-term survival. So, as the TV ads used to say, Accept No Substitutions!

Good luck to anyone who reads this, and thanks for giving me the chance to spread the word. I�d urge people to look at mnovarian.org, the Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance, for more information. If anyone ever has any questions, they should feel free to call me directly. I�ll help in any way I can. God bless,

Meta

Thursday, October 27, 2005 10:40 AM CDT

SEE NEW PHOTOS AT THE LINK ABOVE . . .

Greetings, all . . .

And thank your for your patience! I�ve been so greedy about seizing time to work on my book (more on that later) that I haven�t devoted the time to keep you updated. But here I am now! And here�s a rundown on what has happened since last month.

HEALTH
My body continues to feel great, overall: There are days (like yesterday) that it fairly hums with energy. It�s strange�it feels like you�ve drunk too much coffee, only without the anxiety. Maybe part of this is the result of not being very physically active: I�ve been working on my book, mostly, or projects for a client. This weekend, though, I�m hoping to get out and paddle the Snake from our cabin down to the St. Croix�it�s 10 or 11 miles. All the rains have brought the water up to a (temporarily) runnable level. I did three fall color cruises (two by myself) this time last year: It�s a magical, if a bit chilly way, to say goodbye to this special stretch of water until spring of next year.

In between bursts of feeling fine, I�ve actually found myself being surprisingly tired. I know I was focusing all my energy on healing: Now that chemo is over and I�ll officially in remission, my body apparently has decided that it�s OK to let go. So there are days when I take a nap (or two), and others where I just veg on the sofa most of the day. This is likely what I�ll do this afternoon after seeing the acupuncturist�or pin pusher, as Mark calls him. I also am finding that it takes a surprising amount of energy for me to do work-related items. Twice in the past couple of weeks, I�ve had client meetings with several other people that ran an hour and a half or longer. I�m exhausted about halfway through these meetings�to the point where I come home and collapse. I�m usually low on energy the following day.

At first I was impatient with this: I somehow expected, Warrior Woman that I am, to go right back to �normal.� But, with the help of my acupuncturist and psychologist, I�ve come to more fully recognize that my body and my psyche have been through an ordeal, no matter how well I did through it. It�s still hard for me to give myself permission to fully relax (that damned perfectionistic work ethic!) But I get not so subtle reminders. My hands and toes ache and hurt sometimes, the result of (temporary, I hope) nerve damage from chemo. Lately, I�ve had several bouts of dizziness, where the room spins. That�s likely due to Meniere�s disease, a chronic condition I have that causes incapacitating vertigo attacks. It�s exacerbated by stress and by being tired, so it�s a clear message to SLOW DOWN. All right, all right, I�m listening.

And then there�s my memory. I have chemo brain so bad I don�t even bother expecting it to work, or getting frustrated when it doesn�t. Yesterday (which was not a stressful or busy day at all), I left one room and went into another at least five separate times during the day with the intent to get something (my coffee cup, a book, reading glasses), did indeed do something in the second room and then returned to the first room�only to realize that I had forgotten to get what it was I had planned to get in the first place. My favorite was the dog: I usually let Maisie into the backyard at 9 a.m. We leave her there for no longer than a half hour: Otherwise, she wriggles under the fence and gets out. OK. So it�s 12:30, I�m on my way out the door to an appointment, I stop briefly to say goodbye to Maisie in her kennel . . . Yep. I had completely forgotten about her. Fortunately, she either stayed in the yard or got bored roaming the neighborhood and wriggled back in.

Two times in the past week I�ve left the house in my car to go to the grocery store or to get gas, to discover when I got there that I forgot my purse. Then there was last weekend. Mark and I were reading the paper, and I said: �Hey, when you finish that article, I have something important to talk to you about.� So about a minute and a half later, Mark finishes and looks up. �Yes?� he asks.
�Yes, what?� I ask, confused by his look of expectation. Not only did I forget the subject I wanted to discuss; I had forgotten that I even wanted to talk in the first place.
Oh well. I just shake my head ruefully when these things happen. There�s not a thing I can do about it, other than be entertained.

My depression around the uncertainty also is better than last time I checked in. It helps to have had my psychologist tell me this is normal. I�ve begun going to a weekly, 8-part class for people with life-threatening diseases, which helps: I had wanted to take this earlier, but the chemo schedule made it impossible. And I occasionally go to an ovarian cancer survivors group where the members told me they�ve also gone through this. Last night, we celebrated one member�s fifth anniversary as a survivor. She brought cupcakes with the number 8 on top of them�her latest CA 125 number. Sadly, most in the group are either going through a recurrence now, or are currently in remission after at least two recurrences. Two women have colostomies and wear bags; another has had a recurrence at least once a year for the past five years. It�s disturbing. But that�s the reality of this disease. The good news: Most of them have lived with ovarian cancer three years or longer. And, as my friend Dan says (he survived spinal cancer that was supposed to have killed him 5 years ago), we�re all �looking at dirt from the right side.�

HAIR
�Fuzzy Wuzzy grows her hair, Fuzzy Wuzzy isn�t bare . . .� yes, my head is no longer pink and shiny! It�s taken some getting used to: I still find myself doing a double take when I catch my reflection in a mirror. The texture is extraordinary: softer than baby�s hair, Mark says. He likens it to duckling fuzz. I LOVE how it feels; I wish it could sty this way forever. It�s now long enough (1/4 inch? �?) so I can grasp it and pull. It�s too short to say whether it will be curly or frizzy. It looks really dark, after all these months of seeing skin. But when I compared it to a lock I saved after getting my head shaved, it looks like it might be slightly lighter. I may or may not have a bit more gray: There are some weird strands that are actually translucent (they�re invisible when you put one on your hand) salted throughout my hair: They�re finer and longer than the others. I can�t tell if this is �normal� hair or whether it�s just the remnants of growth that the chemo has poisoned.

The only place hair hasn�t been growing yet is my legs: They have just a faint stubble. Even my cheeks have a fine coating of down, which apparently is not unusual. Poor body: Now that it�s not being poisoned, everything (for now, anyway) is going wild.

THE BOOK
I�m really cranking along: I now have about 150 pages, spaced in a way so it likely will be 150 pages in an actual book. I�m about half done: I�m in the middle of chemo in my writing. The last third will be about how this journey �and frankly, all the love you have sent-- has begun to transform me spiritually and psychologically. As you can imagine, that will be the hardest to write. I�m using some of my postings, and I�ve included some of your messages back to me as examples of all the love and support I was receiving. I�m using first names only, in case any of you are uncomfortable being identified. My goal is to have a draft completed by the end of the year. I�d be done sooner, I suppose, except I keep having great ideas for revision, and then go back and work on tweaking a chapter or section before I forget.

I�ve been a professional writer all my adult life, but this is different. It�s so much more creative�I�m having an enormous amount of fun exploring and playing. Plus, it�s a real challenge figuring out how to tie things together, decide what to leave out and how to write so that people remain interested. I�m really enjoying playing with flashbacks and metaphor, varying structure and tone, trying to describe things so they come alive, weaving in events as they occurred with my reflections on them now. It does, help, however, that I�m a writer by trade. The other 7 people in my class are mostly close to being done with their works. They each have 200 pages or more, and they�ve all been working on them at least two years. I�ve been writing since late May, and have 150 pages! The rest talk about how hard it is to make themselves sit down and write. For me, it's normal: This is what I do. It�s not unusual for hours to fly by�until I realize, Ooops, it�s past time for lunch. Or, uh-oh, I�m going to be late for an appointment!

If there are still a lot of people checking in on this journal, I thought I�d put some of the first chapters on this Website, so you can see how this journey began. So let me know if you�re still reading this! All for now,

Love, Meta

Tuesday, September 20, 2005 10:39 AM CDT

Hi all! Vacation was spectacular (more on that a little later). Once I was back last week, I went to my oncologist at the University to get the results of my post-chemotherapy tests�the CAT and PET scans.

Bottom line: I�m dancing with Ned (and Mark couldn�t be more pleased!)
h/o OvCA is what one of my medical sheets said.

Huh? �Dancing with Ned� is the whimsical expression some reproductive cancer survivors use to say they�re in remission. It takes its name from the abbreviation that goes onto the medical reports: NED, or �no evidence of disease.� My mammogram was A-OK. My CA 125 was 6, which is great. My hair has started growing back (Go, Warrior Woman!). I have a suggestion of soft fuzz on the top of my head, which literally appears to grow by the hour. I have shadows of eyebrows, especially in the area closest to my nose. Last week, I plucked my first facial hair (!!!). And, somewhat sadly, my legs aren�t feeling quite as silky-smooth-devoid-of-hair as they have been the past five months.

While I was at Dr. Judson�s, she made arrangements for me to go get a bone mass scan. Chemotherapy, along with the sudden loss of estrogen from the hysterectomy, can really do a number on normal bone growth. The bone scan, which was normal, will serve as a baseline for future tests. Dr. Judson took pains to point out one line of the referral sheet when she handed it to me. Under �reason for referral,� she wrote: �h/o OvCA.� In other words: �History of ovarian cancer.� For now, at least, the cancer is history! Now all I have to do is everything within my power to help keep it that way.

In terms of the oncologist�s meeting, I was a bit surprised she didn�t do a final pelvic exam. In fact, I was prepared for it. After we had talked about the test results, and Mark�s and my vacation to Carmel, I said: �Are you going to do a pelvic exam?�
�No,� she said, �not this time.�
�Are you sure I don�t need one?� (She must have thought I was nuts: No woman in her right mind begs for a pelvic.)
�That�s right,� she said. �You�re off the hook.�
�Well, in that case,� I said, �I have something I�d like you to take a look at.�

I jumped off the exam table, unzipped my jeans, pulled down my underwear . . . and there, from belly button to crotch, down the 8 inches of my scar, were bright yellow little smiley face stickers. Dr. Judson, Donna her nurse and the medical student all cracked up. I had gotten the stickers in the mail in early May, and had been saving them for just this occasion. (In the past, I�ve put them on IRS mailings.) I was glad to finally be able to put them to this planned use!

As many of you already know, Mark and I went to Carmel a week and a half ago to celebrate remission and our 10th anniversary. It was perfect. I knew it would be perfect from the first morning, when I stepped outside the motel room where we stayed on our way down to Carmel, looked around at the beautiful morning and said . . . �Mark, is that a hawk?� Sure enough: We grabbed our binoculars, walked across the street, and there was a red-shouldered hawk, sitting on the branch of a pine tree. As many of you know from reading my last posting, birds of prey are a personal totem for me.

We stayed at a wonderful bed and breakfast, about six blocks from downtown Carmel and about 10 blocks to the ocean, where we enjoyed the whirlpool tub for two every morning and the fireplace in our sitting/TV room every night. We had a brick-paved mini-courtyard outside our room, where we�d sit and listen to a fountain, breathe in the flowers� fragrance and watch for acorn woodpeckers (a new sighting!) and Anna�s hummingbirds (another new bird!)

We ate fresh seafood every day, at venues that included Clint Eastwood�s cozy bed and breakfast operation in a converted dairy barn overlooking a sea marsh, an old-time Italian trattoria with elderly Italian male waiters in white shirts and ties, a sushi restaurant and a no-frills, locals-only fish market/cafeteria along a working wharf. We took several hikes along the ocean, including one 4.5 mile hike in Big Sur that followed a rushing creek through a redwood forest, climbing 1,600 feet up a winding mountain trail to end at a mountaintop plateau, overlooking the ocean.

And we went with a young marine biologist on an eight-mile guided sea kayak tour up a river area that feeds into the ocean (called an estuary). We had up-close encounters with harbor seals, cormorants, brown pelicans, flashy little shorebirds and even a translucent jelly fish, big as a large pizza pan, with purple racing stripes and tentacles trailing 3 feet behind it, who hung out right next to our boats. The young biologist had a great time as well: He said we were the only experienced paddlers he had guided since he began the job last spring. Because we were the only people on the tour, he could relax and not worry about his guests capsizing or getting nervous. Plus, he was able to explore some narrow, windy tributaries with us that were too hard for inexperienced paddlers to navigate.

My energy was great: In fact, as my body has surged back from chemotherapy, some nights I lie in bed and can almost feel myself vibrate! So it was a super time. Many thanks to Mary Lilja, who first recommended Carmel to me when we began planning a getaway in May; to Scott and Anne, who took us to the airport; and to Dale, who made sure that Marley and Pete didn�t get too lonely at home. Plus, to Mark�s sisters, who sent a huge bouquet, just bursting with color, to celebrate the official declaration of remission once we were home.

So I�m back from vacation, I�m in remission, I�m starting to work again . . . now what? A book I read while I was in the hospital said that the first months or year of remission actually are harder for many women than going through chemotherapy. The problem, the book said, is the uncertainty: You�re no longer getting chemotherapy, so you have no assurance that the cancer hasn�t started growing again. Everyone around you thinks the battle is over, but it may very well not be. Statistics show that for 85 percent of women with advanced ovarian cancer, the cancer comes back�with recurrence typically occurring in less than two years.

When I first read this, I was sure I would be different. Given that not every patient goes into remission, my thought was: �Cripes, just give me a shot at remission! If I can get to that point, I�ll be grateful and as happy as I can possibly be.�

Yes, I�m incredibly grateful. I thank God, my healers, my body and all my supporters every day. I was a real warrior woman while I was focusing all my energies on beating the cancer. I was giddy as the CA 125 number plummeted down. I felt a deep appreciation for life, and a spiritual connection to the world, that I vowed I would never lose. But now I�m re-entering �normal� life, with all the daily irritations and stresses. I no longer have a single focus and the clarity that comes with that focus (plus lots of time to think). I�m finding it hard to maintain a deep spiritual sense in the midst of daily activities. In the past week, I�ve been wrestling with depression, with sadness and with a renewed sense of anger and unfairness over this damned disease, which still has the very real potential to cut my life short.

I don�t want to whine or sound like a defeatist, because I�m not. I also am not asking for people to assure me that I�ll be different and beat the odds; statements like that aren�t helpful. I hope I�ll beat the odds, I have tons of things in my favor (including all your support), and I�ll do everything I can to protect my health. But in the final analysis, who knows?

When I first was diagnosed with cancer, I told Mark we were looking at a 3-step process: 1) surgery and recovery; 2) chemotherapy (and, ideally remission); and 3) concurrently, the spiritual, psychological and practical changes this journey would require me to take. What I�m going through now, while not very pleasant, is simply a part of Step 3.

Last weekend, Mark and I went to an ovarian cancer walk-run fund-raiser. It was amazing and heartening. There were more than 1,000 people, helping raise ovarian cancer awareness and money in honor of a relative, a friend, in memory of people who have died from the disease. Our friend Sue Weum ran in my honor. She didn�t have anything teal, so she wore purple, my favorite color. Mary Lilja and her mother Katie walked with Mark and me. Our springer spaniel, Maisie, also came along, wearing a teal bandana (and trying to get her nose into every intriguing smell).

I haven�t met that many sister survivors, so I made a point of talking to as many bald or kerchief-covered-head women as I could. I was grateful to meet so many survivors. Yet I was disturbed to learn that most of them had had at least one recurrence. There were the people with notes on their back that said �walking in memory of . . . � �women who didn�t make it. And we ran into a man who was walking in memory of his wife, who died last spring after battling back against the disease for five years. It was sobering.

Mark and I have decided to expect the best over the long term, while planning for the worst. It influences many decisions. Do I buy a new car this year, as I had planned to last year? No, let�s wait and see if I make it through at least one-cancer free year. Do we sell the cabin and pay off our mortgage, so we can enjoy more time together? It�s a possibility; let�s wait and see how it goes.
Yesterday, Mark and I had our regular twice-annual meeting with our financial advisor. Things are going well, and we�ve agreed to continue planning for the long term. But we also spent a significant amount of time discussing this: Say the worst scenario happens, the cancer recurs and Meta�s condition is terminal. How do we make sure we can take money out quickly so that Mark can quit work and we can enjoy the remaining time together? Are there changes we should make to help Mark when Meta�s gone? Whew! I was very much ready to discuss these subjects. But lord, it was hard.

Late in July, a woman who was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer the same time I was died (she had Stage IV, one step worse than mine). Then there was Peter Jennning�s rapid decline and death from lung cancer. I told Mark it feels like I�m driving in a blizzard. Those two went into the ditch, despite their best efforts. The snow has cleared, but the road still is treacherous. Next time, it could be me.

Clearly, we all die at some point. There are no promises, and many of us get no advance warning. But consider how it would feel if someone came up to you and said: �You should know this about your future: There�s a 75 percent chance you�ll die in the next two to five years.� Now, what will you do?

Dancing with Ned is great, and I hope to keep him around. But Ned can leave any time he wants.

Love,

Meta

Saturday, September 3, 2005 12:01 AM CDT

Yippee! It�s Saturday morning, and Mark and I are on our way to Carmel, California, to celebrate our 10th anniversary (and not so incidentally) my amazing remission. We�re both so excited! If I were still on the chemo cycle (what had become my �normal� schedule for the past five months) I would have had a treatment a week ago Friday and would just be coming back to �life.� Instead, I�m fretting about whether I packed the right clothes! We�ll be back late Friday, Sept. 9.

Unlike our normal adventure-travel vacations, this one will have lots of time built in for sheer relaxation�sleeping, strolling around, sightseeing, bird-watching and eating lots and lots of great seafood. Of course, me being me, and Mark being my incredibly well-matched partner, we�re also planning on working out, hiking, horseback riding and/or sea kayaking around Monterrey Bay as my energy permits. (I just looked at those two sentences, and they seem to contradict each other, don�t they? What can I say? What�s active to some people is relaxing to me!)

I had my last tests to confirm remission performed yesterday, and will be meeting with Dr. Judson to get the results when I get back. The fact of the matter is, my CA 125 level would detect any cancer before it showed up on a scan�so I�m not worried about the results. But this is a step that�s routinely done, and it will be nice to have that out of the way and to be officially in remission.

The tests comprised a combination PET scan and CAT scan�the PET scan, per my insistence (I learned about this new type of scan from the ovarian cancer �Bible� that Laurisa Sellers, Mark�s ex-wife sent me while I was still in the hospital.) The PET scan was really interesting. Here�s how it works. A CAT scan simply shows the shapes of your organs: Large malignancies show up as a thickening, a shadow or a mass. The PET scan complements the CAT scan picture by showing how the cells of the body actually work.

I was injected with a very small amount of radioactive fluorine bound to glucose (sugar) molecules, with the amount based on my body weight. Cancer cells absolutely love sugar to help fuel their aggressive growth, so they grab onto it quicker than almost any other cell in the body does. (I actually had read this fact earlier in several cancer nutrition books I bought, and I have greatly curtailed my sugar intake as part of a nutritional program I developed for myself.). Anyway, the only other tissues that love sugar as much as cancer cells do are brain cells. So, once I was injected with this solution, I was put in a dark room, on a recliner, where I was instructed to do absolutely nothing for the next hour and a half while my body metabolized the sugar. A resting brain will consume 60 percent of the sugar in the radioactive injection; an active brain will take 70 percent. So the technicians don�t want you doing anything to up the brain�s sugar intake (I meditated, then fell asleep). If you have a collection of cancer cells present, they�ll consume the solution that remains.

At the end of the wait period, the technician came and got me and put me in a tube like a CAT scan, where both tests were run. The radioactive solution makes the areas that have consumed sugar glow. Following the tests, the radiologist looks at the two images, which are overlaid together. Masses or thickenings that glow are cancerous; abnormalities that haven�t taken up the sugar are scar tissue or other benign formations. Isn�t that cool? In some cases of cancer (probably very advanced, aggressively spreading forms, I�m guessing), people undergoing chemo are now given PET/CAT scans after a few treatments to determine if the areas of cancer are still there, if they�ve shrunk or (worst case scenario) if they�ve grown and spread to other areas. The oncologists then can adjust or change the therapy accordingly.

Aren�t some of the new medical technologies amazing? At the same time, there�s always the factor of the humans administering this procedures and/or deciding whether to prescribe them. Case in point: I�m lying in the narrow CAT scan tube, arms stretched out over my head so they don�t interfere with the imaging. The technician is somewhere beyond my head, preparing to inject dye for the CAT scan into the IV they left in my arm after injecting the PET scan solution. Then he says: �Ooops! Be back in a minute.� I hear his footsteps hurry away.

Ooops? Ooops? Hasn�t anyone ever told him that you NEVER say that to a patient during a procedure? I was more amused than anything else; he didn�t sound horrified. Anyway, it turns out the IV had become clogged during the waiting period. When he tried to inject the dye, the resistance from the clog �blew out� (his words) the plastic cap at the top of the injection port, spattering drops of dye all over. Suspecting an equipment malfunction, he tried again twice before he brought me back out of the tube and identified the problem. Then it was 25 minutes of lying still in the tube, thinking about the sunshine and birdsongs outdoors (it was COLD in that room!) before I was good to go.

I also had a mammogram and a post-final-treatment CA 125 blood draw done as long as I was at the U. The mammogram I was due for. Fortunately, the chemo treatment used in ovarian cancer also works for breast cancer, so there should be no problems. The oncologist had not scheduled a final CA 125, presumably because my number has been so low that it wouldn�t make any difference. But since my life has been so ruled by this number the past five months, it seemed fitting to know where I ended up after all six treatments. So I called the oncology nurse, asked her to write up an order, and had the blood drawn before I returned home. I look forward to reporting the results to you in a week and a half or so.

In terms of the rest of my life, I�ve done a couple of other work projects since my last posting, and visited the Snake and fished with Mark last weekend. It was just beautiful! (To paraphrase a popular men�s T-shirt saying, �Men want me. Fish and cancer cells fear me.�) Tuesday I tried to do a yoga class at my health center (my body has had it: I had to sit out and rest for about a third of the hour). On Thursday I successfully went for another 20-mile bike ride with my friend Ann on Minneapolis area trails. Another spectacular day out!

I�ve also had some spiritual wildlife blessings this week. People who know me best know that I feel a deep connection with wild birds, and particularly birds of prey. They have shown up for me (and for Mark, and for both of us) at various significant moments. The day before we were married, a Swainson�s hawk came and sat for a half hour in the trees right outside our dining room window, where we were playing cards with family members. It had never been there before, nor since. One of the first weekends after we took possession of the Snake, a broad-winged hawk soared overhead, around us and around us, as we began making the place ours. The first day I was on the Kettle River in a solo whitewater kayak, an eagle kept flying just ahead of us downriver, then finally circles over me and dropped a huge feather as a gift beside my boat. This was a special blessing: Mark and I weren�t sure I�d ever be able to boat by myself (much tippy-er and less stable than our big tandem canoe), given my extreme fear of the water. (I still am scared, but I manage it.) Yet there I was, successful, after facing my fears and learning to whitewater kayak by myself in a weekend-long class.

Anyhow, last Sunday, while we were fishing in the middle of the Snake, an immature eagle came flying up toward us, low over the river. He stopped above me and circled three or four times, obviously curious about what I was doing (what IS that shiny thing down there? Oh, it�s just a funny looking head).

Wednesday, as I was returning home from a wonderful lunch with my friend Mary, I spotted a bald eagle soaring nearby over Highway 100�s five lanes�a major urban area where I�ve never seen an eagle, and certainly not outside migration season! Then, Thursday, as Ann and I were sitting at Minnehaha Falls, resting at the halfway point of our bike ride, I spotted something flying above us, golden in the sun. It turned out to be a merlin, a small, aggressive falcon rarely seen in urban areas. Eight years ago or so, I named my communications business Merlin Communications after this fellow.

The universe is sending me a message: �For now, you are safe and blessed, and everything will be OK.� I believe that. Thank you SO much for your support, your interest and your messages. I said early on that you all are the wind beneath Mark�s and my wings right now. God bless you, and A-MEN!

Love,

Meta

Wednesday, August 24, 2005 8:56 PM CDT

Hi there, and I�m sorry I let the time slip away from me before updating you all again. Anyway, here I am!

I�m getting my strength back from chemo and things are going great. First, I finished the first work I�ve done for a client in six months. I wrote an article and a Q&A totaling about 3,000 words to help my client market its technology services to a hot prospect. It went well (chemo brain wasn�t TOO great a problem), and everyone (including myself) was very pleased. The client and I spent an hour and a half on the phone today discussing another couple of assignments that I�ll be doing for them in the next three weeks. It�s a small company, and the things I do for them are very important in terms of building their business. I�m so fortunate to be able to apply my talents to provide value (and to feel really valued) this way.

Second, Mark and I celebrated our 10th anniversary last weekend. Probably to no one�s surprise, we spent it buying sporting equipment and doing something mildly athletic (i.e., within my limited aerobic abilities). We test-rode and bought two bicycles on Saturday that are designed for both road and trail use�something we�ve been talking about doing for a long time! (Gotta have something to do in the summer when the rivers are dry!) Saturday evening we had an impromptu dinner at an outdoor caf� with our friends Scott and Anne. We laughed a lot and were wonderfully silly.

Then, because Sunday was gloriously sunny and in the mid-70s, Mark and I went for a 15-mile bike ride along the Red Cedar River Trail in Wisconsin, a little more than an hour away from the Twin Cities. The trail has the benefit of 1) being flat, a necessity for more my not-yet-fully-replenished supply of red-blood cells; 2) along a pretty little river, with tall pines growing along the riverbank and over the trail; and 3) serving as a route to a wonderful old creamery made into a gourmet restaurant, with outdoor dining. What with the sun, exercise and a late start in the morning, Mark and I devoured the salads and bread we were served and had the waiter bring us more.

On Monday, I took a three-hour nap (gee, I wonder why?). Then on Tuesday, Anne and I took advantage of another perfect 70-degree day to hit a bike trail in the western suburbs and explore where it went. What a wonderful surprise! The trail, built along a (flat) railroad bed and crossing some of the area�s most affluent suburbs, was amazingly private and remote-feeling. We crossed lush marshes and grasslands, surrounded by trees on both sides (we saw a young deer jump out ahead of us onto the trail!) to wind around the bluewater bays of Lake Minnetonka. We ended up in Excelsior, a small town with a quaint downtown on the shores of the lake, where we had lunch at a deli, sitting outside. On the way back, Anne�a part-time school social worker who helps adolescents�applied her skills to instruct me how to dismount my bike at stop signs without falling over (you think I would have learned this somehow, but . . . !) It was very thoughtful of her, and I finally have a technique for doing it gracefully!

All told, we figured our trip was about 20 miles. Now the biker chicks are looking at other trails we can explore during Anne�s days off.

I also have big news for you all: I�m writing a book about my cancer journey! I actually started writing it in my head while I was still in the hospital (just shows you what heavy drugs will do). I began charting my adventure on May 26, and I have more than 60 single-spaced pages written so far. I figure that�s around 100 book pages, depending on format. And that doesn�t include any of the journal entries, which will be incorporated, of course! My goal is to finish a first draft around the end of this year, if possible, and to polish it and arrange for publishing (I hope) next year.

In a wonderful stroke of luck, I�m getting help in meeting this goal. Since May, I�ve been checking the class schedule for The Loft, a large and professionally operated literary organization in Minneapolis dedicated to encouraging local writers. I knew I couldn�t take spring and summer classes because of chemo. But I had identified two classes that I hoped would be offered this fall: one on basic memoir writing, and the other on how to get your work published. I kept checking The Loft�s Web site every two weeks, and on Aug. 11, there was the new fall schedule! I got REALLY excited when I saw there was a semester-long class on �Advanced Memoir Writing: Refining and Finishing the Longer Work.� It was EXACTLY what I was looking for. Here is what the class description says:

�This seminar is for writers who have had at least two courses in writing memoir or other creative nonfiction and are on their way to completing a manuscript of one hundred pages or more. Our focus will be to make significant headway in finishing. We will cover such topics as finalizing structure; getting to the heart of the story; and revising for content, style, and mechanics. The instructor will read each student�s manuscript. Weekly journal exercises will help clarify the issues involved in finishing a long work. We will also discuss finding an agent/publisher, negotiating contracts, and other topics involved with publishing.�

See? It�s PERFECT! There were just two hitches. The class is limited to 10 people, so applicants had to submit up to 25 pages of their work along with a synopsis of chapters and hope they�d be chosen. And the deadline was Aug. 12�the next day!

So I cobbled together a chapter synopsis (again, I�ve had a basic outline in my head�it�s crowded in there!), printed out the first 25 pages of what I�ve written, and hired a messenger service to run it over to The Loft (at that time, I was still spending a lot of time sleeping or in bed.) Yesterday, I got a call: I made the cut! The class starts Sept. 20 and ends at the end of this year. Yeh! Plus, my surgeon has already said he�d be honored to review the book for medical accuracy and give me any input he has, based on what he hears from his patients.

Much gratitude and love to all of you who have kept me writing and inspired, both by your readership of this website and by your encouragement to write a book. I�d love any input or ideas that you�d care to share, based on what I�ve already written. It already has a title by the way, which I�m keeping as a surprise. Nor is the title �It�s Not About the Boat,� despite the book that Lance Armstrong wrote with a similar-sounding name.

I originally intended for this work to help other ovarian cancer patients (reading first-person stories from cancer survivors has really helped me). But based on all your interest and responses, I�m thinking there may be a broader audience. As we get older, I think we all wonder how and what we�d do if we were given a life-threatening disease diagnosis (I know I did.) And while many of us know someone who�s had cancer, a lot of us don�t know much about what that means on an individual level, what the treatments are like, and how your life is affected. I�ve been given the opportunity (that�s one way to look at it, anyway) to help people understand this experience, at least as I�m living it.

Having said that, I�ve actually been a bit puzzled by why you all find me and my experience inspiring. Then, in reading a book of Buddhist meditations, I came across something that spoke directly to me. It was about �renunciation,� which is the Buddhist word for dropping our natural tendency to try to avoid pain and suffering (which, after all, are part of life), and instead to accept and move beyond them. See what you think (and I did NOT make one word of this up!). Here is what I read:

�If we understand renunciation properly, we also will serve as an inspiration for other people because of our hero quality, our warrior quality, the fact that each of us meets our challenges all the time. When someone works with hardship in an open-hearted, humorous way like a warrior, when someone cultivates his or her bravery, everyone responds, because we know we can do that, too.�

God bless you all. I�ll try to update this again before Mark and I go on a remission/anniversary vacation to romantic Carmel-by-the-Sea in California starting Sept. 3. At the very least, I�m hoping we can figure out how to download a couple more photos from the camera to the computer, and then to upload them onto this page. (Would you believe much of my work involves helping people understand very complicated technology? I have a hard time believing that sometimes, too!)

Best,

Meta

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 10:06 AM CDT

Yee-haw! Yippee! (Insert your favorite expression of celebration and exuberance here!)

I�m FINALLY done with chemo, until/unless the cancer comes back! The last week was as bad as the previous round: continuous low-grade nausea, fatigue, weakness and what I think of as terminal constipation, although the bone pain from the white-cell-booster shot wasn�t as bad. But I started feeling better this weekend, and even started work on my first client assignment yesterday. (Thank you, Dianne, for holding all those assignments for me!) It feels great to be getting back to my work routine again. I also am blessed to have a handful of clients who are so supportive of my situation and my limited availability, and so appreciative to have me helping them again.

Having said the above, it�s also impossible to believe right now that I�m done with treatment. Yes, I know it intellectually, but after organizing my life (and Mark�s, to a great extent) around this schedule for almost five months, and being down for the count for about half that period, it�s difficult to comprehend that I won�t barely start feeling good and then have to get knocked down by chemo all over again.

I�ve been so surprised and excited by the surge of energy each time I start feeling better, that I imagine I�ll be bouncing off the walls two months from now. (Mark can tell you how insufferable I get even after a day or two of not feeling sick. He always says he can tell that I�m rallying when I start acting silly.)

So what�s next? About 85 percent of women with advanced ovarian cancer (like me, Stage III-IV) have a recurrence in the first five years. That�s because this cancer is extremely aggressive, plus some cells from the initial tumors may have managed to resist the chemo the first time around. If and when you recur, you�re likely to keep recurring, which means managing the disease through early detection of the recurrence, new forms of chemo and/or additional surgeries. As I�ve mentioned before, on a nationwide basis, most women with advanced disease who recur will end up dying within the first two to five years.

O-KAY . . . .Having said that, let me state that I plan on NOT recurring, in so far as I have any control over this, and your prayers and positive energy make any difference! It�s entirely possible: The statistics are national and indiscriminate. They don�t take into account the difference between women who are relatively young and otherwise very healthy vs. women who are older and have other, underlying health problems; or, for that matter, women whose CA 125 scores end up in the single digits, like me, vs. women who end up in the 20s or 30s (if you missed it, see my last posting explaining why the difference in numbers is significant).

Consider Diane Landon, a nurse at my health insurance company who just signed in to the guestbook. She�s been checking in with me by phone every month as part of the insurance company�s service to people with serious illness, injury or disease�a wonderful support). It turns out that Diane herself had Stage III-c ovarian cancer 10 years ago. And it�s never recurred! So I have some extremely positive role models.

On the other hand, if I do have a recurrence, I plan to be healthy and robust enough so I can manage this as a chronic disease. Warrior Woman is not going into retirement, I can assure you. Anyway, here are the next (medical) steps:

1. Determine which physician and which facility I want to go to for follow-up care. Ordinarily, patients probably stay with the physician who managed their chemo. But while the U has been very good, the gyne-oncs there appear to be too busy to provide the personal attention I get at Mayo. (Just consider how I can e-mail the Mayo surgeon I saw six months ago, and get a detailed response back within a day or two. I have never been given my U physician�s e-mail, have been asked to deal with her nurse instead, and have seen the doctor infrequently.) If I recur, I�ll be in this fight for the long haul, and I want a strong personal relationship with a physician who understands that I want tons of information, and expect to be an active and pushy partner in my treatment (I�ll tell you about my proactive activities to date in a future posting). I have done further research, and learned that a �medical oncologist� ONLY specializes in chemotherapy. (The surgeon I saw at Mayo only does surgery, and the U physician does both.) Plus, the medical oncologist also is an internist, so can provide guidance on mammograms, colonoscopies and other preventive measures to keep Warrior Woman strong. SO, after talking to my surgeon, my plan is to get a medical oncologist at Mayo for follow-up care, and maintain my relationship with the surgeon as well. That way, I�ll have two experts who know me and can offer their recommendations from different perspectives in the event the cancer recurs. I am awaiting a recommendation on whom to see from the surgeon; then, I have to go to my primary care physician and see if she�ll give me a referral so my health plan covers it. Wish me luck!

2. Within the next month, I�ll have a CAT scan, a pelvic exam and another CA 125 test (to measure the effects of the sixth chemo session). At that time, I will officially be pronounced in remission. A side note: I have found through research that there�s a new kind of scan called a PET scan (a name more PC than �cat� scan�now dogs can have their test, too!) that doesn�t just picture the organs; it shows cell function and can sometimes highlight malignancies more quickly than a CAT scan. It�s new, and expensive, and only available at major cancer centers (like the U and Mayo, fortunately). I have checked with my insurance company and they will pay for it. Interestingly, the Customer Service person I called there couldn�t find �PET scan� on his database of procedures, and had to make some inquiries at the insurance company before getting back to me. So I�ll get a combination PET scan and CAT scan to cover all the bases. In the next few months, I�ll also get a mammogram and colonoscopy to provide a baseline for those risk areas as well.

3. Then, every three months for the next two years, I�ll get a CA 125 measurement (and maybe pelvic exams) to watch for a recurrence. The longer you can go without a recurrence, the better. It indicates that the first chemo treatments you received were effective and presumably that the cancer has become less aggressive and thus easier to fight. Some people also get CAT scans regularly as well. Fortunately, I have such a great CA 125 marker (meaning it was really high when I had cancer) that it�s a superior early warning system. It�s �where the money is� for me, said the surgeon. Some people have CA 125 levels that NEVER go up during cancer (called a �false negative,� which is why the CA 125 level is a relatively poor screening test). For them, the CAT scan is the best indicator of recurrence. Unfortunately, by the time something shows up on the CAT scan, you have not just cancer cells, but measurable tumors. This disease really SUCKS, doesn�t it?

In my case, it would be cause for concern if the final CA 125 level (as determined next month) doubles, then doubles again. The type of treatment (chemo/surgery, plus what type of chemo) would then be determined by how long ago my final chemo session was.

4. After the first two years, provided there are no recurrences, I will get CA 125 measurements every six months for the subsequent three years. All told, these tests take me five years past the original diagnosis�the most likely time for recurrence. On the other hand, I have run into two women who had their first recurrence after eight years! How discouraging�and yet how fortunate that they had eight years cancer free.

Well, I should go work on my client project. I�ll keep updating this website until at least the end of this year. I want to keep all of you apprised, tell you about a whole lot of other stuff I�ve learned and what I�m doing with this experience. Look for another update next week.

Love to you all,

Meta

Wednesday, August 3, 2005 11:49 AM CDT

Bleeaugh! As it turns out, I didn�t have my last chemo treatment yesterday. Instead, I woke up at 2 a.m. Tuesday with severe stomach pains, which eventually were bad enough to cause nausea and vomiting. When it�s that early in the morning, you�re not really in control of your mind, so I thought: What if this is a bowel obstruction caused by a new tumor? (Intellectually, I knew this was highly unlikely, given my very low CA 125 levels.) Or, what if I have cancer of the stomach, which may or may not be detected by the CA 125?

So I took some anti-nausea tablets (I had thrown out the pain pills Mayo gave me after surgery), woke Mark up at 6, and called the gynecological oncology resident on call over at the U. She said that since I already had a pre-chemo appointment scheduled with Patty Judson, my oncologist, that morning, I should come as soon as the office opened and they�d get me in ASAP.

Dr. Judson acknowledged that a recurrence in the bowel is the first thing she�d be concerned about�except that my CA 125 levels were running so very low. The possibility of a bowel obstruction caused by cancer scars was also extremely unlikely, she added. Plus, if that were the case, my nausea should not have responded to the anti-nausea medication, which it did. Absent any additional testing, she said it was likely I had food poisoning or some kind of gastro-intestinal bug. If the symptoms persisted after a day or two, I was to come back.

Chemo was off for the day, which is an irony: You want to have the patient feeling great before you before you fill them with poisons, after all! (I had expected this, based on what I�d heard from other patients.) Instead, Mark took me by wheelchair over to the chemo unit to get three hours of intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration, laced with anti-nausea medication. (Dr. Judson added pain medication to this cocktail as well after I asked.) When I was wheeled into the unit, my favorite chemo nurse, Laurie, exclaimed, �Meta!� (Hmm. After so many hours in the unit, I�ve became �Norm!� on �Cheers.�)

I ended up with the smaller of the two beds, incredible dreams as a result of the pain medication, and downright euphoria due to the fact that I no longer was doubled over with pain. Then I was sent home, courtesy of friend Mike Lilja and his chemo car, with more pain and anti-nausea medication to take as needed. I had a bagel, slept 4.5 hours, got up when Mark got home and had applesauce and cottage cheese, and went back to sleep for 10 hours. This morning, after getting up for breakfast, I slept another hour and a half. (I feel like I DID have chemo, just without the cancer-killing drugs!)

I�m now rescheduled for chemo at 7:30 on Friday (yeh! Yeh! Yeh!), my favorite time because I�ll get in immediately and am almost assured the bigger of the two beds. The nurse had asked if I wanted to wait and reschedule to next week, but I�m eager to get this done. Plus, as I had hoped, the symptoms now have almost entirely gone away.

The good news about yesterday: Three extremely positive things happened (other than that awesome IV pain medication).

First, I had my blood tests yesterday morning, and my CA 125 has slipped yet another notch, to 5! I have been in the single digits for the last three chemos: Starting with 82, to 11, to 7, 6, and now 5. Amazing when you consider I started at 9770 before surgery, and 1440 afterward. Mark was astonished: He told me he didn�t think it could go any lower. I�m not sure what I expected, except that I wasn�t surprised.

Second in the line of good news: My neutrophils, the white cells that fight infection, were a whopping 5.6�more than 4 times higher than the 1.3 score last time, and well within the 1.6-13 normal range. So I�m in great shape for chemo! (At the same time, my red blood cells are below even low-normal, explaining why I�m out of breath when I do basic yoga or walk up the slope from the river up to our cabin.)

And third: A physician used the word �cure� in talking about my prognosis yesterday. Mark had asked what the next step was after this chemo, and Dr. Judson told us that they�d schedule me for a CAT scan, CA 125 and a pelvic about four weeks from now. �If those are all positive, you�re officially in remission,� she noted. �We don�t call it a cure unless you never have a return of the disease.� At the same time (and I�m still a bit giddy about this), she intimated that I may be one of the fortunate women who IS cured. When Mark asked about my long-term chances, she said it�s always been known that people whose CA 125 levels end up very low tend to do better. Fr the first time, she said, a new study that came out of Scotland actually offers evidence of how low CA 125 levels correlate with the disease. �Women whose numbers ended up in the 30s did less well that women with ending scores in the 20s, who did less well than women whose CA numbers after chemo ended up in the teens. And women with numbers in the single digits did best of all.�

Think of that! Plus, my number has been below 10 for more than half of the treatments. She wasn�t specific about the outcomes for people in the �single digit� group�whether they were cured, or simply had recurrences much later than other patients. Plus, I know a woman whose ovarian cancer recurred after eight years of being in remission. But wouldn�t it be great if the cancer never recurred for me?

I�ll sign off on that positive note. I�m off to search the Internet for that study and see if I can get more detailed information.

Love to all,

Meta

Thursday, July 28, 2005 12:04 AM CDT

Greetings!

As you may remember, I postponed chemo from July 26 to next Tuesday, Aug. 2, to give my white and red blood cells longer to recover. It�s been great having almost an extra week to feel good�plus, I suspect I needed it. I continue to have chemo brain and I�m still weaker than I�ve been in the past.

Of course, that hasn�t stopped me from exercising and having fun! Last week I took Maisie for a three-mile walk around Lake Harriet in south Minneapolis. Harriet is my favorite of the three Minneapolis Chain of Lakes with walking paths around them, mostly because it has a lot of trees and shade as well as sun. Maisie was exhausted after retrieving sticks for me out of the lake�and I found out how truly out of shape I have become two days later, when just about every muscle below my navel ached from the unaccustomed exercise.

The rivers in Minnesota have been feeling the effects of the hot weather and current drought, so there hasn�t been the opportunity to truly have my new purple kayak show me what it can do. But Mark and I had a great time going up to our cabin on Saturday night and doing yard work on Sunday (with lots of rest and water breaks in the 100-degree weather!). Mark, poor dear, had to mow, while I refilled bird feeders and cut down buckthorn and prickly ash saplings that have begun to rear their unwelcome branches in our woods. Afterward, I relaxed down along the river with a book while Mark fished�catching an eating-sized smallmouth bass and channel catfish. With any luck fishing this weekend up there, we�ll have our first fresh fish dinner since we bought the property three years ago.

In terms of chemo brain, mostly I feel normal, with some memory lapses around word choices and recent past events. For instance, I was looking in frustration for my reading glasses, trying to retrace my steps, when I realized I had them in my hand all along! But I got a sense of how confused my brain is when I went to yoga at my health center Monday night and was listening to the instructor tell people how to get into positions I�ve done regularly for the past four years. I sat there thinking: OK, now which is my right hand? And what about my left leg? Is that this one? It took a while to figure out things that are usually second nature. My favorite instance was this: You�re on your hands and knees, kind of forming a table, and you lift your left arm to point straight out in front of you and then lift your right leg to point straight out in back of you (you look kind of like an arrow, while balancing on your right arm and left knee.) Unfortunately, I lifted my left arm AND my left leg, and then was surprised when I couldn�t balance! Oh well. It�s nice to have a concrete cause, other than getting older, to blame my spaciness on!

Wednesday I went back to another yoga class and got so tired doing basic poses during the hour that I had to sit several poses out. The highlight of the class, other than being strong enough to be there at all, was that I ran into Joan, one of my favorite fellow yoga classmates I haven�t seen for at least a year. (I figured she was at her second home in Virginia, where she grew up.) Usually we just talk on the way in and out of class. She offered to buy me a cup of tea after class and we spent the next hour and a half catching up, sitting on the back deck at the club, which overlooks four or five acres of deep grasses and marshland. It was a wonderful way to celebrate the day, sitting there in the hot sun with a cool breeze bathing my skin and rippling the grass, while I enjoyed Joan�s soft Virginia accent. We talked about cancer, death, spirituality, family dynamics, granola recipes and even home remodeling. It was just a wonderful time, getting to know a very gentle and wise woman and simply being glad to be there and feel so vitally alive.

All for now. I need to rustle up some lunch and then go have my blood drawn at the U in preparation for chemo next week. (If there�s any measurement that�s astonishingly low, this gives them time to help get me back to healthy enough so I can handle the treatment again.)

My love to you all, and I hope you�re making the most of the summer. I�ll look forward to reporting what this next (and last!) round of chemo brings.

Meta

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 10:26 AM CDT

Hi all, and welcome me back to the land of the living!

I�m saying that because the 5th chemo session, about a week and a half ago, really knocked me down. It was amazing�a lot like the 1st time I had chemo and was just three weeks out from surgery. The good news: I wasn�t too terribly nauseated, and the really yucky taste in my mouth didn�t reappear. The bad news: I was very, very weak physically until just three days ago, on Sunday. Until then, it was again a matter of having to sit down and gather my strength if I simply walked from the living room to upstairs, or if I stood upright for more than a couple minutes. I actually started rallying last Friday, but I slept poorly on Friday night�and that tapped my energy reserves enough so that I felt terrible all over again on Saturday.

I also had bone aches the first week (you feel bruised and pained all over, like you�ve been thrown down a very long hill), and just about every food tasted weird except for bread, grape juice, non-sweetened cereal and oh, yes, my favorite�cottage cheese. I�d like to report that this caused me to lose a couple of pounds, but sadly, that was not the case. (Some woman actually gain weight during chemo.) When you feel crappy, there�s not much to look forward to except trashy novels and what you�re having for your next meal!

I credit two things with my feeling more poorly than usual. First, I understand that the effects of chemo are cumulative, so perhaps having a half gallon of poison (!) poured into me every three weeks is catching up to me (gee, do ya think?). And second, as I indicated earlier, I got the go-ahead to get chemo last time even though my white and red cell counts were pretty below normal. When you don�t have adequate red blood cells to fully oxygenate your body to begin with, and then that number gets knocked down farther by chemo, it�s not surprising that I felt the way I did.

I don�t know how single people get through this�with a lot of help, I guess. I do know that these down times stick Mark with all the work, having to shoulder all the grocery shopping, meal prep and clean-up in additional to working more than full time. I appreciate it, sweetheart! Hang in there: Just one more to go.

Anyway, after seeing how I was feeling, I called the chemo nurse a week ago and suggested that we postpone my next (AND LAST!) chemo from July 26 until Aug. 2. From my reading and talks with the oncologists, I know that postponing for up to a week doesn�t make a significant difference�and that those extra few days will give my blood counts additional time to work their way toward normal. Donna the nurse thought it was a great idea, so we�re set. (Now, why didn�t the experts suggest this in the first place? It just demonstrates you really need to be an active partner in your treatment and healing.) Plus, my Aug. 2 appointment with the oncologist is before 9 a.m., so I�ll have one last shot in getting to the chemo unit relatively early and claiming THE BED! It will be interesting to see how my body reacts this last time around, and to what extent being so weak for so long was a function of the low blood counts.

Mark�s kids Brian and Megan just left, after a vacation here four days. Brian lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where he started teaching high school photography last year; Megan lives in Iowa City, where she helps teach college and is working on her dissertation toward a Ph.D. in history. It was great seeing them. Although Megan visits fairly regularly, Anchorage is a hike, so we haven�t seen Bri since last August, when we went and visited him. We had fun�went to a play on Sunday night, and out to dinner last night, among other things.

For the play, I decided to try my hand at drawing on eyebrows and the suggestion of eyelashes, etc. It�s not easy to create appropriately shaped eyebrows and place them where they belong: The first one took me four tries. I�m glad I don�t have to do that all the time! You know how our moms used to say, �Well, I�m going to go put my face on�? It occurred to me when I was washing off the makeup Sunday night that that�s EXACTLY what I had done. A little soap, and I had taken my �face� off�back to the blank slate your face becomes after chemo. Fortunately, I don�t seem to be as bothered by this as many other chemo patients. I�m more than my face or hair, I don�t FEEL like a �cancer patient� most of the time, and I�m neither angry or sorry for myself, so it�s easy for me to go around this way.

The last couple days my energy has come roaring back with a vengeance. After feeling so depleted, I become almost giddy once I have some interest in and ability to do things. In fact, because yesterday was so cool and beautiful, we all decided to take a walk around Lake Calhoun downtown�a three-mile outing (Maisie got to go, too.) I wasn�t sure I�d have the stamina to make the whole trek, so Plan B was I�d stop when needed, take it easy and enjoy people watching until Mark, Bri and Meg got back to the car and came around to pick me up. I stunned myself by being able to do the whole walk without much effort, although I began to feel my lack of overall fitness the last half mile or so.

I simply couldn�t believe it: I could barely get off the sofa on Saturday, and on Tuesday I walked three miles! As I told Mark later, I wouldn�t trade my body for anyone else�s (no matter how attractive, fit and shapely) in the world. It came through surgery and recovery with relative ease; I�m having a much easier time with one of the roughest regimens in the chemo world than most women do; and it bounces back from chemo with amazing strength and energy. Having a body that supports my desire to do everything I can makes it a lot easier to feel positive. Yeh, Warrior Woman!

Finally, I checked in with my oncology surgeon via e-mail last week with a couple of questions. I also directed him to the Web site. �GREAT!� he said. �Your CA 125 values are fabulous.� He added, after seeing the photos: �Great with your kayaking! Keep it up. Your attitude is tremendous!�

Interestingly, he also made a point in telling me that I should not worry if my CA 125 numbers actually go up somewhat the next two times (measurements for the effects of the 5th and 6th chemos). It turns out that all numbers are + or � 4, so they can range somewhat. He�s great: No one else had told me this, and I can�t say how much I appreciate his prompt responses and encouragement every time I shoot him an e-mail.

All for now. I�m on my way to see the acupuncturist for a visit to further boost my immune system, liver function and digestion (Mark calls him the pin pusher.) I�m counseling him on what sort of inexpensive lake kayak to buy.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your support. I feel your caring every day, and I love it that you care enough to check in and see how I�m doing.

Much love,

Meta

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 10:24 AM CDT

Hi all, and welcome me back to the land of the living!

I�m saying that because the 5th chemo session, about a week and a half ago, really knocked me down. It was amazing�a lot like the 1st time I had chemo and was just three weeks out from surgery. The good news: I wasn�t too terribly nauseated, and the really yucky taste in my mouth didn�t reappear. The bad news: I was very, very weak physically until just three days ago, on Sunday. Until then, it was again a matter of having to sit down and gather my strength if I simply walked from the living room to upstairs, or if I stood upright for more than a couple minutes. I actually started rallying last Friday, but I slept poorly on Friday night�and that tapped my energy reserves enough so that I felt terrible all over again on Saturday. I also had bone aches the first week (you feel bruised and pained all over, like you�ve been thrown down a very long hill), and just about every food tasted weird except for bread, grape juice, non-sweetened cereal and oh, yes, my favorite�cottage cheese. I�d like to report that this caused me to lose a couple of pounds, but sadly, that was not the case. When you feel crappy, there�s not much to look forward to except trashy novels and what you�re having for your next meal!

I credit two things with my feeling more poorly than usual. First, I understand that the effects of chemo are cumulative, so perhaps having a half gallon of poison (!) poured into me every three weeks is catching up to me (gee, do ya think?). And second, as I indicated earlier, I got the go-ahead to get chemo last time even though my white and red cell counts were pretty below normal. When you don�t have adequate red blood cells to fully oxygenate your body to begin with, and then that number gets knocked down farther by chemo, it�s not surprising that I felt the way I did.

I don�t know how single people get through this�with a lot of help, I guess. I do know that these down times stick Mark with all the work, having to shoulder all the grocery shopping, meal prep and clean-up in additional to working more than full time. I appreciate it, sweetheart! Hang in there: Just one more to go.

Anyway, after seeing how I was feeling, I called the chemo nurse a week ago and suggested that we postpone my next (AND LAST!) chemo from July 26 until Aug. 2. From my reading and talks with the oncologists, I know that postponing for up to a week doesn�t make a significant difference�and that those extra few days will give my blood counts additional time to work their way toward normal. Donna the nurse thought it was a great idea, so we�re set. (Now, why didn�t the experts suggest this in the first place? It just demonstrates you really need to be an active partner in your treatment and healing.) Plus, my Aug. 2 appointment with the oncologist is before 9 a.m., so I�ll have one last shot in getting to the chemo unit relatively early and claiming THE BED! It will be interesting to see how my body reacts this last time around, and to what extent being so weak for so long was a function of the low blood counts.

Mark�s kids Brian and Megan just left, after a vacation here four days. Brian lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where he started teaching high school photography last year; Megan lives in Iowa City, where she helps teach college and is working on her dissertation toward a Ph.D. in history. It was great seeing them. Although Megan visits fairly regularly, Anchorage is a hike, so we haven�t seen Bri since last August, when we went and visited him. We had fun�went to a play on Sunday night, and out to dinner last night, among other things.

For the play, I decided to try my hand at drawing on eyebrows and the suggestion of eyelashes, etc. It�s not easy to create appropriately shaped eyebrows and place them where they belong: The first one took me four tries. I�m glad I don�t have to do that all the time! You know how our moms used to say, �Well, I�m going to go put my face on�? It occurred to me when I was washing off the makeup Sunday night that that�s EXACTLY what I had done. A little soap, and I had taken my �face� off�back to the blank slate your face becomes after chemo. Fortunately, I don�t seem to be as bothered by this as many other chemo patients. I�m more than my face or hair, I don�t FEEL like a �cancer patient� most of the time, and I�m neither angry or sorry for myself, so it�s easy for me to go around this way.

The last couple days my energy has come roaring back with a vengeance. After feeling so depleted, I become almost giddy once I have some interest in and ability to do things. In fact, because yesterday was so cool and beautiful, we all decided to take a walk around Lake Calhoun downtown�a three-mile outing (Maisie got to go, too.) I wasn�t sure I�d have the stamina to make the whole trek, so Plan B was I�d stop when needed, take it easy and enjoy people watching until Mark, Bri and Meg got back to the car and came around to pick me up. I stunned myself by being able to do the whole walk without much effort, although I began to feel my lack of overall fitness the last half mile or so.

I simply couldn�t believe it: I could barely get off the sofa on Saturday, and on Tuesday I walked three miles! As I told Mark later, I wouldn�t trade my body for anyone else�s (no matter how attractive, fit and shapely) in the world. It came through surgery and recovery with relative ease; I�m having a much easier time with one of the roughest regimens in the chemo world than most women do; and it bounces back from chemo with amazing strength and energy. Having a body that supports my desire to do everything I can makes it a lot easier to feel positive. Yeh, Warrior Woman!

Finally, I checked in with my oncology surgeon via e-mail last week with a couple of questions. I also directed him to the Web site. �GREAT!� he said. �Your CA 125 values are fabulous.� He added, after seeing the photos: �Great with your kayaking! Keep it up. Your attitude is tremendous!�

Interestingly, he also made a point in telling me that I should not worry if my CA 125 numbers actually go up somewhat the next two times (measurements for the effects of the 5th and 6th chemos). It turns out that all numbers are + or � 4, so they can range somewhat. He�s great: No one else had told me this, and I can�t say how much I appreciate his prompt responses and encouragement every time I shoot him an e-mail.

All for now. I�m on my way to see the acupuncturist for a visit to further boost my immune system, liver function and digestion (Mark calls him the pin pusher.) I�m counseling him on what sort of inexpensive lake kayak to buy.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your support. I feel your caring every day, and I love it that you care enough to check in and see how I�m doing.

Much love,

Meta

Saturday, July 9, 2005 12:33 AM CDT

NEW: WE NOW HAVE PHOTOS, THANKS TO MARK'S DAUGHTER MEGAN AND FRIENDS CHARLIE AND NANCY. JUST CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE.

Whew! I had my 5th chemotherapy two days ago, on Thursday, so only ONE MORE TO GO! I can�t wait! In just a month, I�ll be done, and getting over the worst of the effects of the sixth round. Yeh!

First the numbers: CA 125 dropped another point, which makes it a 6! At the same time, the neutrophil count was 1.2 (below the 1.6 low normal point), meaning that the white blood cells that fight infection were dangerously low. And this is despite the fact that I�ve given myself injections of Neulasta white cell enhancer after the last two treatments. At the recommendation of my acupuncturist, I�m also drinking an herbal tea formulated to boost white and blood cells production. Yikes! Can you imagine what the number would be without this help?

Last time the white cells were this low, I didn�t get to have chemo. And it was a waiting game this time, while the chemo nurses tried to find an oncologist to tell them what to do.
The good news is, my regular physician was out (I think she would have postponed the treatment), and the oncologist on call said I could go ahead.

So here I am, groggy, mildly nauseated and with chemo-brain memory lapses (I was trying to say �fork� last night, and the first two words that popped to my lips were �carrots� and �scissors.� Pretty random, huh? Let�s just hope this sort of thing isn�t permanent.

Like last time, Round 5 proves there is no typical chemo experience. Because I had a late doctor�s appointment before chemo, I was too late to get a bed. Still, I managed to curl up into the recliner, with TVs on either side of me obnoxiously blaring playing different stations, and sleep for 1 � hours. Then my nurse woke me up, said a bed had come open, and she had saved it for me. I trundled down the hall with my IV pole, collapsed into the bed and slept for another 2 � hours�far longer than I�ve slept before.

Good thing, too, I guess. Thursday night I had a steroid high�mind racing, yet your body is tired�that didn�t allow me to sleep until 5 Friday morning. Friday, I slept off and on all day. And last night, I slept a full 12 hours. Today, I�m planning to go back to bed as soon as I post this. In other words, this feels a lot like the first chemo. In addition, my bones ache�but not enough so I need to head for the painkillers. So far, that nasty taste in my mouth hasn�t recurred�but, hey, tomorrow�s another day!

The last week or so was just about perfect. Last Saturday, we kicked off the July 4th holiday by going to our friends� Charlie and Nancy�s house in River Falls with eight or nine other boaters for a river cruise and barbecue. nancy and Charlie, by the way, had specifically timed the event between chemo sessions so I could participate. Thanks so much,m you guys!

The river was the Kinnickinnic (or Kinni), a clear, cold, narrow trout stream that flows through the bottom of heavily wooded, sheer-rock face cliffs. The seven-mile stretch that we paddled was stunningly beautiful. With no development, and the banks lush green from recent rains, the Kinni seemed like an intimate tropical river. It continuously curved and twisted, so you were treated to new vistas around each sharp bend. I lost track of the times that either Mark or I turned to each other and said, �My gosh, this is beautiful.� I paddled solo again, and while I got tired at about mile 5, it was just fine. Then back to the Raders� house for a fabulous potluck. Truly a spectacular day.

Then we went up to our land on the Snake through Wednesday. Mark�s daughter Meg came up on Monday for a picnic along the banks of the river; the big entertainment was throwing the retrieval dummy into the river for our springer spaniel, Maisie, to retrieve. When we got Maisie last year, the trainer told us not to have her retrieve as practice too many times because she�d get bored. I think we�re now on Retrieval Number 121,301 since we got her, and it hasn�t happened yet. We understand she�ll calm down when she�s 8 or 9, so only 6 or 7 years more to go!

Two different days, we took our whitewater boats up to the top of the river (about two miles upstream) and paddled the ledges down to our cabin. It was great practice surfing the ledges and trying other play moves. Cedar waxwings were thick in the air overhead, darting at mosquitoes (yes, it�s that season), and both times we passed under a bald eagle sitting regally in a pine tree. We also encountered four common mergansers (ducks with grey-beige backs and auburn heads) hanging out on a mid-river rock.

PLUS!!! I was paddling a NEW KAYAK! I haven�t been entirely pleased with my most recent whitewater boat, which I bought about three years ago, so when a new design came out in purple (my favorite color! no kayak maker has made purple for years!) I couldn�t resist borrowing one from our local gear store and trying it out on a local lake. SOLD! It�s the same size as my old boat (7 ft. 7�) but far more comfortable. It has much better adjustable outfitting for knee and back support, and once I got it out on whitewater, I was delighted to discover that it surfs like a dream. (For the boaters out there, it�s a Liquid Logic �Li�l Joe,� with racheting backband, etc. It has hard chines and more of an edge than I�m used to, so I�ll have to work on that downstream lean. It�s designed for river running/surfing/spinning moves. Plus, Midwest gave me a deal!)

This brings our flotilla of boats up to 11, but I�m planning on selling two, which the new purple boat will replace. I can�t wait to start feeling better again, so I can take the new boat out on a real whitewater river (provided the rivers stay at a decent level, that is).

Finally, the night before chemo, I was given an unexpected--and truly extraordinary--present. Our boating friends Dennis and Carol, who already have brought us numerous gourmet treats and meals, had asked if they could drop by before Carol went on a West Coast hiking trip with friends.

With little fanfare, Carol handed me a package that contained a stunning handmade quilt that she had begun making shortly after she heard about my diagnosis. She said it's my "remission celebration" gift. The quilt is about 3' by 4.5', and I'm honored and extremely humbled to have been given it. It's in vivid shades of purple with brightly colored Japanese-themed fabric circles and quarter circles featuring birds, dragonflies, fish and flowers. She even sewed the shape of a kayak onto one of the patches.

Mark and I are now trying to figure out where to hang this lovely, vivid piece of art. Carol, there's no way you could have known this, but I love quilts and I've been looking at quilted wall hangings for at least four years, trying to find just the right one for our limited wall space at home. Thank, you, thank you from the bottom of my heart--it's perhaps the loveliest thing I've owned.

By the way, regarding the photos:
For those of you who haven�t seen me, I�m still bald, with a nice tan head. My lower eyelashes are long gone, and my thinning eyebrows are starting to show moth-eaten patches. You know what? I don�t care. I can�t expect to look great during chemo, and it proves the treatment is working. Although my lovely wig still awaits, I seldom cover my head: I like how cool and comfortable it is.

The two exceptions are while I�m getting chemo (I get chilled with those bags of cool liquid pouring into me) and when I wear my whitewater helmet. The scarves and caps I have are too bulky to fit under the helmet, so I tried a skull cap sold at gas stations for motorcycle riders. It works just great! I started with a black pattern, and last week, to be more worthy of my new boat, bought one sporting red and yellow flames.

Plus, I receive a remarkable amount of unexpected affirmation and support from my new look. Other cancer survivors come up to me, tell me their stories and say they�ll pray for me. And the other day, when Mark and I were at Nicoll�s Diner, our breakfast place in Pine City, the waitress came over and said: �You know, we all think it�s awesome that you don�t worry about wearing a scarf or something. You look great, and we�re all rooting for you.�

I know you all are, too. Much love,

Meta

Tuesday, June 28, 2005 2:46 PM CDT

Hi, all, and wow!

You won�t believe the weekend I had! First, the last chemo left me more nauseated and achy than usual, along with a nasty taste in my mouth that made just about everything taste bad (the worst, if you can believe it: Ice cream and/or chocolate. Where�s the justice in that?)

But suddenly, come last Thursday/Friday, I suddenly felt good�energy almost back to normal, nasty taste gone, etc. So when Mark and I went up to the river Saturday, I filled the bird feeders, helped Mark with yardwork, and went into town to run errands. Then, Saturday evening, we experienced one of the unexpected benefits of country living (for demented souls like us, anyway). We were coming back from town and were half a mile away from our cabin when we noticed that a large Hereford calf had somehow gotten through the fence at a nearby farm and was trotting along the road, looking for a way to get back to the rest of the herd.

So we drove over to the farmhouse to let them know: No one home. Undaunted, Mark and I decided that we would find a gate and herd the calf back in by ourselves (Mark grew up in a rural area; I grew up on a farm and raised beef calves for 4-H. ) First, we tried a nearby gate: I coaxed the cows in the pasture over near the gate, hoping they would attract the calf, and Mark tried to drive him toward the gate. Nothing doing: He took off back up to the farmhouse�s backyard. Plan B: Find another gate (around the corner, behind a barn, not exactly opportune in terms of having the calf see it), then I drive the calf toward the gate while Mark blocks him from going back to the road. Victory! After trampling through the newly planted vegetable garden, the calf was safely back home, and Mark and I . . .well, after some congratulatory high fives for our resourcefulness and keen understanding of the bovine intellect, we began to wonder whether he was supposed to be in that pasture on the other side of the yard.

Turns out we guessed wrong, but no harm. The farm family didn�t come home till late Sunday afternoon, so it�s a good thing we took care of the calf (we stopped by to tell them what we had done about an hour after they got home, as it turns out). The lady of the house said her husband immediately noticed the calf was missing, �panicked� (her word) and began hunting for the calf, then noticed him in the other pasture with the cows. So they called all their neighbors to thank whoever had put him away. Mystery solved. When I asked the calf�s name, so I could tell you all about it, the owner said, �Uh, we try not to name things we�re going to eat.� I�m sure she was thinking, �Dumb city slickers.� Anyway, it was fun. .

Sunday was, well, UNBELIEVABLE. Several good friends were going canoeing on the Kettle River (Class II-III in terms of difficulty), a half hour north of our cabin. I was feeling good enough so I took a risk and decided to go in one of my solo kayaks (in other words, there�s no Mark to help with steering and power), while Mark paddled his own canoe. In the event that I ran out of steam, our friend Scott and Ann generously offered options that included riding in the middle of their tandem canoe, or paddling the canoe with Ann while Scott took over my kayak.

I did great! I even had enough energy to surf some waves and make some moves that I hadn�t planned on doing. I felt joyous and blessed the whole four hours down the river: I never thought I�d be able to paddle whitewater this year, not to mention being able to do so in a solo boat! Plus, the Kettle is a spectacular river, with craggy sandstone cliffs carved into shapes by the water, towering red and white pine trees, and beautiful ferns, moss and wildflowers growing out of rocky crevices. I never tire of looking back upstream, taking in its wild beauty, and marveling at how lucky I am to be able to see it intimately, from the water, as few people can.

Heartfelt thanks to Scott and Ann, both for suggesting the trip and then giving me a fallback that made it possible to try boating on my own. I love paddling with y�all, my friends!

After a restorative nap Monday morning, my energy level has stayed up. (I�m amazed and awed by how strong and resilient my body is. I�m just incredibly lucky�and grateful!). So I went to yoga class Monday night and again this morning. My goal is to start getting back in shape, insofar as chemo sessions permit, so I can do more outdoor things when my �normal� life resumes.

Speaking of which, my next chemo is next Thursday, July 6. After that, only one more to go! Can you believe it? Mark and I are paddling with friends on a quiet little Wisconsin river this Saturday, then enjoying ourselves until Wednesday at the Snake.

Love to all,

Meta and her faithful Warrior Woman body

Tuesday, June 28, 2005 2:46 PM CDT

Wednesday, June 22, 2005 5:08 PM CDT

Greetings, all!

I�m beginning to come out of chemo-coma from the treatment last Thursday (and yes indeed, I did get THE BED, hallelujah!) I must confess, though, I�m feeling crabbier and sorrier for myself after each treatment. The weakness and fatigue last longer, I have bone aches from the white cell-boosting shots, I�m borderline nauseated for a week, and horribly constipated for two weeks, AND I�m flat on my back inside for at least a week when it�s SOOO beautiful outside.

An acquaintance asked me the other day how it was going and I said, �Great, but I just had chemo, and that makes me awfully weak.� Then he asked, �Yes, but how are you FEELING?� I had to stop and think a while before I understood what he might have meant�after all, I had just said I was weak. What I think he meant was: Is any of the sickness caused by your cancer going away?

I myself would have assumed that cancer makes a person sick-- and that with successful chemotherapy, the sickness starts to fade. I know that�s the case with at least some other types of cancers. But that�s the very weird thing about all this: Other than some very uncomfortable bloating, I had virtually no symptoms before the surgery�nor do I have any now. The only time I feel sick is after the chemo.

Suffice it to say, I�m looking forward to being done (only two more to go!!!). And I�m working very hard to continue to view the chemo sessions as infusions of a miracle drug, rather than poisons that makes me sick. The truth is, the sessions are both. It�s amazing to me how scientists came up with a way to manage the doses or maximum effectiveness with the least possible effects. I�m unbelievably fortunate that the chemo is so effective for me�and that my side effects, while progressively more unpleasant, are a heck of a lot better than they are for many, if not most, people. And it�s great that my favorite authors keep coming up with new releases for me to read.

Back to the chemo last week. Patients and oncologists tell you to pay close attention to how you feel after your first session�and that that pattern will pretty much hold true in subsequent treatments. My experience, however, roams all over the place. This time, I wasn�t hungry during chemo (a bit nauseated, in fact) and didn�t eat the lunch I packed (previously, I�ve been starving). I missed the anticipated steroid buzz following the first and second chemos, and slept a lot in the following two days. The morning after the third treatment, I was wide awake at 4:30. By the time Mark got up, I�d paid all the bills, cleaned the kitchen, cleaned my office and had breakfast.

This time, for novelty sake, I had a chemo buzz from the time I left the clinic. I talked a mile a minute from the time I got home until Mark went to bed, and then stayed up to 3:30 a.m. (!!?) reading and writing in my journal. Friday and Saturday I felt weaker but pretty much OK, to the point where Mark and I spent the weekend at the cabin. On Sunday, I totally ran out of energy and just laid around the cabin. Monday I napped a little; Tuesday, I pretty much slept all day. Today, I�m weak and the borderline nausea I�ve had since Sunday is still around. Suffice it to say: I guess there�s no way to reasonably predict what will happen next time. And, oh yes: I�LL BE SO GLAD WHEN THE SIXTH CHEMO SESSION IS DONE!!!!

I heard sad news a little while ago. My new friend Peggy Jennings, an ovarian cancer survivor who visited Mark and me after I came home from the hospital, and was so helpful telling us what to expect, has had a recurrence of her cancer. I think she was Stage II, and she had gone almost two years without cancer. According to the e-mail that her husband Joe sent me, she�s having surgery at Mayo tomorrow. I�m hoping to drive down to see her next week, if she�s still there. It would be nice to see the nurses in that unit again, thank them for their care, and tell them I�m doing well.

I hope Peggy�s surgery is able to remove all the visible cancer, and that she�s able to tackle this setback with the determination and strength I saw in her when we first met. It�s yet another reminder, as if it�s needed: This disease just sucks. From the studies I�ve seen, many women�s ovarian cancer returns in just 18 to 24 months. It�s not something I dwell on. And I�ve also met many women who have had one recurrence, received another six cycles of chemo, and have enjoyed several disease-free years since. But it�s also not something I�m likely to forget.

I appreciate all your postings and thoughts and prayers. I�m hoping to be able to write you all again later this week, or perhaps early next.

God bless,

Meta

Monday, June 13, 2005 3:52 PM CDT

HI ALL! HERE'S A BRIEF UPDATE TO THE STUFF BELOW, POSTED WEDNESDAY, 6/15.

I got my blood test results back this morning, and they're all stupendous (gee, I don't get to use that word very often). The all-important CA 125 has dropped to 7 from 11--hey, I'm in the single digits! I have friends who swear that I'll confound modern science by making it go below 0 before I'm through. (I don't think so, folks.) Just think--three cycles ago, it was 1780! And before surgery, it was 9700.

The neutrophil count, which are the white blood cells that fight infection, was 4-plus, compared to 0.8 this time last cycle. That's at least partially due to the shot of Neulasta I gave myself last time.

And even my red blood cell count increased dramatically, to the highest level I've seen since I've had surgery. This is surprising, given that chemo is supposed to do a number on the red cells as well. The only explanation I have is that 3 weeks ago I started drinking a specially blended tea made of the herb astragalus on the recommendation of my acupuncture guru. Studies show it's very effective in increasing some people's white counts, and that it sometimes works on red cells as well.

I wasn't able to meet with the oncologist yesterday, but I saw something on the Internet that defined remission for ovarian cancer as meeting three criteria: CA 125 between 5 and 34; a CAT scan with no shadows or masses (this would have been the case for me right after surgery, believe it or not); and a pelvic exam that turns up nothing unusual (I had my third A-OK pelvic exam yesterday).

So technically, I may already be in remission. Yeh! I feel so incredibly blessed that everything is going so well.

Now back to the I'mn so-exhausted-and-bored-and-achy-and what's-that-yucky-taste-in-my-mouth doldrums that happen right after chemo.

Love to you all, Meta

HERE'S WHAT I POSTED YESTERDAY:

Greetings!

I�m feeling very remiss for not having provided an update to my faithful friends and loyal readers! The first weekend after chemo I was wiped out, and the last two weekends we�ve spent up at our river camp. More about that in a minute.

I feel great, other than the disappointing but expected fact that I am feeling fatigued for longer periods after each chemo. After the first chemo, it took me a week to get back to feeling normal; the second one was 1 � weeks. This time, it took a full two weeks before I could do more than one errand or household chore before needing to rest for at least a couple of hours. Plus, I was nauseated, food tasted weird because of a metallic taste in my mouth (an expected side effect) and I vomited several times over a period of one day.

So I�m expecting to be able to do less and less until all six cycles of chemo are over (end of July) and for two or three weeks thereafter to recover�so, around the end of August. But won�t that be GREAT??? And in the meantime, after the first three or four days, the taste in my mouth goes away and my appetite is great (as friends will attest who spent time with me this weekend)!

Speaking of which, on Saturday and Sunday, Mark and I did something we�ve wanted to do since we bought our 7 acres on the Snake River two years ago: We had 8 whitewater boating friends up for the first annual M&M cruise down the Snake River, cookout and campout on our land. It was just SUPER.

For one thing, I was able to tandem canoe with Mark down the Snake both Saturday and Sunday without feeling more than normally tired. Our first time on a river this year! I have SOO wanted to do that this summer, and was afraid I�d either never feel good enough between chemos, or by the time I did, the summer drought would be upon us and there would be no water to paddle. (In fact, I felt good enough to paddle my solo kayak, which is stored at the river, but Mark was feeling very protective of me and failed to bring his own solo boat up when he drove up on Friday.) The upside was that we were able to paddle tandem together and we even used the Caption, my all-time favorite boat, on Sunday. It�s a more radical design than most river canoes so it can be hard to paddle, but cruising with it is like working with an eager hunting dog: As soon as you get in, it seems like it starts dancing and bouncing around and saying, �C�mon, where are we going? What do you want me to do?� We love working in that boat together and with all the classes we�ve taught, we seldom need to talk to coordinate our efforts. (One of our students once said we were doing �water ballet.� )

It also was just tons of fun spending quality time with our friends, many of whom never had seen our place before. We potlucked, shared fabulous food, sat around the campfire, and drank champagne to celebrate our first annual campout, the fact that I�m half done with chemo and that remission looks likely (at the least, for the short term). On Sunday, we took over a table at the local diner (which the staff had kindly reserved for us) for a hearty breakfast before most people left for other activities.

Even the weather cooperated (sort of, but since it�s rained every weekend for the past seven weeks, you�re grateful for what you can get!) On Saturday, it absolutely poured on us for about 20 minutes when we were two thirds of the way down the river. It was raining SO hard that Mark and I just started laughing. It got so we all pulled over to calm water because visibility was so poor, plus most of us had to bail several inches of rainwater from the bottom of our boats.

On the plus side, there was no lightning or hail, it was very warm so none of us became chilled, and once the rain passed through, we had a beautiful evening. (We found out later that a tornado had passed through while we were boating about 15 miles north!) There weren�t even too many mosquitoes, considering that it�s June in Minnesota. If it�s going to rain, it might as well happen when we�re expecting to get wet from the waves anyway. (As whitewater paddlers are fond of saying when it looks like rain: �Well, it IS a water sport.�)

Sunday was unbelievably perfect: sunny, warm and a gentle breeze. And because our friends Charlie and Nancy had arrived too late for paddling on Saturday, we got the opportunity to take another laid-back cruise on Sunday, followed by lunch on our deck, watching herons fly up and down the river, and commenting on the hummingbird traffic at our feeders (thanks, Charlie and Nancy, for a super day).

Today, I�m not even sore from working unaccustomed muscles (I�ll probably pay for that premature and ridiculously optimistic statement tomorrow). Tomorrow, I go into the oncologist�s to get my pre-chemo checkup (with special attention given to whether the shot I had has stimulated a strong white count). Then Thursday, it�s back to chemo. I�ll be two-thirds done after this. And because I�m going in early, at 7:30, I may even get THE BED!

Love to all of you. A day doesn�t go by without me thinking of how blessed I am to have all your prayers and support.

Meta

Saturday, May 28, 2005 3:05 PM CDT

Hello, everyone!

It�s Memorial Day weekend, and I�m about to enter the �Whew! I�m exhausted. Where�s the nearest chair?� phase again. The good news is that the weekend is supposed to be mostly rainy, so I don�t expect to miss much.

The even better news is that I was able to have chemo yesterday. Yep, I�m officially half done! Much to my surprise, when they tested my blood at the chemo unit yesterday, the white cell counts had managed to get shoot back up to the requisite 1.5 level, almost double the .8 reading just three days before.

How could I have possibly underestimated my wonderful Warrior Woman body? The healing powers that we all just take for granted are truly amazing. My poor body is being hammered with chemo toxins and it still manages to restore itself to the way it�s supposed to be as soon as it can. I feel a great deal of appreciation and pride for it, as you might be able to tell.

I had a special treat at the chemo unit (special for a chemo patient getting five hours of treatment, anyway). I got THE BED. As I�ve said before, the unit is chock-a-block full of recliners separated from each other by slim curtains. Yesterday, with a lot of people apparently getting their chemo out of the way before the long weekend, one person actually was getting treated in a Lazy Boy right out in the main aisle.

Anyway, because I got there at 7:30, before anyone else, and because my treatment takes so long, I was offered one of the unit�s two hospital beds. Doesn�t seem like a big deal, but they�re tucked into the corners, so they�re quieter; there�s a lot more room around them; they have a separate switch that allows you to turn off just the fluorescent lighting above the bed; and it�s a lot easier for me to nap in a bed than it is sitting mostly upright. (I was able to sleep for about two hours.) It�s like renting an economy car for a vacation, and being given a big Mercedes instead.

Plus, it was fun being there yesterday (or as fun as chemo is going to get). The hum of conversation outside my curtain was livelier and more energized than usual, to the point it almost sounded festive; you could tell staff and patients were looking forward to the holiday weekend.

This has been another week where I have been reminded over and over of your love and support, receiving gifts large and small. Several friends called just to see how Mark and I are doing, and if there�s anything we need. A boating friend sent a card telling me she had just heard the news, and offering any kind of help we need. A friend of a friend whom I had met in passing sent a beautifully articulate and thoughtful card and note telling me that there are many people like her out there whom I may not hear from, but who nonetheless are concerned and are sending prayers and positive, healing energy our way. (I cried.)

Kathy Hedin and Marilyn Smit, two friends I met at Honeywell who live in Colorado and Illinois respectively, also brought tears to my eyes when they sent us gift certificates for a couple of very nice restaurants where you can get carry-out (they went to the effort of checking!). That was SOO incredibly thoughtful, you guys! My sister-in-law Cindy in Guatemala sent an inspirational book that looks wonderful (my reading diet is half my usual detective novels, half spiritual/inspirational/health or funny). My ex-mother-in-law Sharon and daughter Katy sent beautiful, soft summer pajamas to celebrate my chemo halfway point.

Finally, Dennis Davidson jumped through hoops to make sure I could have an outing Thursday evening. A couple of weeks ago, knowing that Mark and I like bluegrass, he called and asked if we�d like to go see the group Bela Fleck with him and a couple of other friends. I told him the event was happening two days after my Tuesday, May 24, chemo was scheduled, so I didn�t know whether I�d be up to it or not. No problem: Dennis got us tickets anyway, and said just let him know the day before whether we could go.

As it turned out, we WERE able to go when the Tuesday chemo got canceled because of my low white blood count. But in the meantime, another problem had popped up: On Thursday, Dennis was still getting over a nasty bout of pneumonia, and I knew, with my lowered resistance, I couldn�t be around him. Ever resourceful, Dennis called the theater and managed to swap our two tickets (which would have had us sitting next to him) for a different pair in a different section of the theater. His wife Carol helped us pick up the tickets, and during intermission, daughter Leslie gave us two homemade loaves of fruit bread that Dennis had baked. The new seats and the concert were fabulous. Thank you, Dennis, and I hope the new antibiotics are doing the trick. We�re looking forward to getting together with you and Carol when I�m more robust and you�re no longer a biohazard.

All for now, folks. I am humbled and deeply touched by your support and caring. Mark and I couldn�t feel more blessed.

Love,

Meta

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 5:49 PM CDT

Hello all, and happy early Memorial Day weekend!

Thanks for your expressions of concern and support following my last posting. I really wasn�t so depressed (what some friends were worried about) as much as sad and scared�and that�s normal. What would NOT be normal is to stuff it all down and not deal with it. So those feelings will come up occasionally, and I likely will tell you. My apologies if I caused you undue concern. Warrior Woman is now back, and ready to update you about what�s going on.

I was scheduled for chemo today (yippee! third round, halfway done!), got my red and white cell counts and CA 125 level tested, and saw the oncologist (before either of the other two happened). This is the first time I�ve seen the doctor since my CA 125 level came back after the first chemo round(down to 82 from 1470), so I asked her if she had seen other patients drop that much with one treatment, and whether it augured well for remission.

She said it happens occasionally, although not often, and that it was �a very positive sign.� She added, however, �What we really look for is the number to be down in the teens after the third treatment. That�s the best indicator (that remission is likely).�

So this afternoon, I got a call from the nurse with my CA 125 level, and it�s:

11! 11! 11! 11! After just two treatments!! At the very bottom of the �teens� scale!

(By the way, did I tell you my CA 125 is 11? 11! 11!)

I called Mark and whooped and hollered over the phone to the point I�m surprised some of you in the western suburbs didn�t hear me. Tonight, we�re going out with some friends for dinner to celebrate! So while I�m not counting on it just yet, it looks very likely that I�ll be one of the 50-80 percent of advanced ovarian cancer patients (I�ve heard different numbers from two different doctors) who go into remission. I credit not just the chemo and my own healing efforts, but definitely all your prayers and energy, with helping me get this far.

On the disappointing side of things, another number also plummeted after the last treatment: the white cells responsible for fighting off infections. My number for these cells last week, when I had it tested, was .6 (1.5 is the low end of normal), and today, when I was all psyched about getting chemo, they abruptly called it off because my number had only risen to .8. The problem is that the next round of chemo will hammer it down further, and without adequate cells to fight off infection, a case of flu or a cold could very easily cause me to be sick enough to be placed in an isolation ward in the hospital. (Yikes!)

So I�m now scheduled to get another blood test on Friday and get chemo then if the cell count has moved up to striking distance of 1.5. If it does NOT get to this point by then, I�ll be looking at chemo mid-to-late next week because all the chemo spaces are taken until then. Fortunately, the schedule can slip by a week to a week and a half, and not make much difference in the chemo�s overall effectiveness.

Thanks to Mike Lilja, by the way, for offering to be my driver after today�s chemo, and to Ann Helm for dropping everything and picking me up when the chemo was canceled and I couldn�t find Mike (Ann, I thought you looked just darned cute in your farmer clothes).

Once I DO get to 1.5, I�ll be given a shot the day after chemo of a drug that stimulates white cell production. The biggest side effect is temporary bone pain (which is supposed to really, really hurt) in my largest bones, namely the pelvis and thigh bones. They hurt because they�re being forced to make marrow. The good news is the pain lasts just a couple days. Additionally, once I start getting these shots every three weeks after chemo, white cell production should not be a problem and I won�t have to worry about quarantining myself or having the chemo treatments slip farther behind. As it currently stands, I should be finished with all six treatments by August 1.

The oncology nurse is scheduling a session after I have the next chemo so I can learn to self-administer the shots, through the port that�s been implanted in my chest. The needle is short, like an insulin needle, so it shouldn�t be a big deal�plus, I�ve always wanted to be a doctor! (Now, Meta, this won�t hurt a bit, heh, heh). And it will be a lot more convenient than spending 45 minutes going to and from the clinic just to get a shot.

As Mike Lilja said, who knew that we�d become experts in discussing things like this that we never dreamed we�d have to know?

All for now, and I�ll update you again on Friday. I�m going to go admire the way my bald scalp gleams in the light and how interestingly patchy my eyebrows have become before Mark and I take off for dinner.

Love,

Meta

Monday, May 16, 2005 2:52 PM CDT

Hi all, and thank you for checking in! Also, thanks so much to the devoted chemo catering participants for making Mark�s and my lives easier and expressing your love and support so eloquently and practically with all sorts of delicious food!

Migosh, the last week has been hard (and why I haven�t had the heart to update until now). The aftermath of the chemo itself was uneventful. But sitting with all the fears and uncertainty that have come boiling up recently has been hard � necessary to acknowledge and process, but hard.

First, the chemo aftermath. Some things were noticeably better: no nausea, and I didn�t sleep for three days straight as before. Instead, I needed naps of 2-4 hours for the third through fifth days. (Both my docs had said that it likely would be better the second time, given that I was six weeks out from surgery and thus more fully recovered.).

Here is what was harder: Instead of taking another four or five days to get my physical strength back, it took about a week before I could do mildly physical things (like take a shower, get dressed and put a load of laundry in without having to rest for 20 minutes). Knowing that this may continue to change makes it a little harder for Mark and me to plan any fun activities while I continue to get chemo.

In the first few days, my hands tingled and hurt, which could be a sign of what�s called peripheral neuropathy�temporary (usually) nerve damage to your hands and feet. In more severe cases, your hands lose some of their ability to function, and your feet are number enough to cause you to be unsteady and stumbling. This may or may not get worse with subsequent chemo treatments; my fingers are crossed (see, they still work!) that it won�t.

I also could feel the chemo affecting me mentally (spacy) and emotionally, making me feel more gloomy and likely to dwell on the unknowns (see below). One of the unknowns, although this is not my major worry, is that during a routine annual check-up for my Meniere�s disease, my ENT doc told me that 15-20 percent of people permanently lose some hearing as a result of the chemo protocol I�m on. Since I�m deaf from Meniere�s in my right ear, I�d just as soon this didn�t happen! The audiologist had suggested that we check each month�but since there�s no remedy if I do start losing that hearing, I told her I�d like to wait until fall, when all the chemo treatments are over. I�ll cross that bridge if it happens. In the meantime, I�ll talk to the oncologist and see if there�s some way to protect against this effect in terms of when I get the chemo and in what doses. At the same time, the chemo seems to be working really well:.Bottom line, I�d rather be alive and hard of hearing, then dying and possessed of perfect hearing in my left ear!

Which brings me to what�s hard: The fear and uncertainty. Yes, things appear to look really good for remission, and yes, YES, I�m determined not to let this stupid (f***ing) cancer end my life. But I also am aware of the facts: Some people come back out of remission as early as 3-6 months after the cancer stops, depending on how aggressive your cancer is. And because the cancer tends to come back with a vengeance at some point, 75 percent of people with Stage !!!-IV cancer die within 2-5 years after diagnosis.

I�m determined not to be one of those statistics, and I�ve doing everything within my power to take care of myself, promote healing and ensure a cure. But I also can tell you how bottomlessly scared, sad and angry the possibility of dying so soon makes me feel. We were up at the river yesterday to open up our cabin, and I was overwhelmed with how beautiful it is there, and how much the land, the river and nature speak to me. But close behind that was the unavoidable thought: How many more seasons will I be here to be part of this? To know friendship, and joy and just the sheer wonder of life? Small wonder I tossed and turned instead of sleeping last night.

The uncertainty feeds into issues and decisions every day. When should Mark and I take a vaction to celebrate our 10th anniversary, which falls August 19? Is early September long enough after all chemo, or will I still be weak? If that�s the case, should we wait? (We�ve already regretfully dropped our initial plans to go to North Carolina and have a boating/relaxation vacation.)

Should we splurge on this vacation or save up for a South American trip next year? Will I even be here next year? Should Mark and I pay extra on our mortgage every month so we can retire in six years (or long term plan), or should we save that money in case the cancer recurs and he wants to take a long leave of absence so we can go play for a while?

You get the idea: It sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks. None of these is a huge issue in and of itself, and we can always change course if need be. But the fear and the desire to make the most of my life are almost always present�and sometimes take center stage, like this past week. For now, we�re making plans for the short and medium terms, understanding that they may need to be modified. And maybe after a couple of years, we�ll feel more confident looking longer term.

God bless all of you for listening. Keep praying and sending your wonderful energy, please. And spend a few moments some time this week to enjoy how wonderful your life is�stresses and problems notwithstanding--RIGHT NOW.

Much love,

Meta

Friday, May 6, 2005 9:14 AM CDT

Greetings and happy Friday to all of you!

I had chemo Wednesday, enjoyed a bit of steroid high yesterday (up at 4:30, responding to e-mails) and wanted to give you an update before the expected chemo-sleep sets in.

It looks like the major drop in my CA-125 cancer marker, to an astonishing 82 (!!!!!!!) is the correct number. The chemo nurse called me back and said she had double-checked that it was my blood test, and that I can count on it being right. Meanwhile, I also wrote to my surgeon at Mayo, Timothy O. Wilson, who had asked to be contacted with the CA-125 score when I got it. In my e-mail, I specifically asked if he has ever seen the number drop that quickly before. Here is his response, which I thought you�d enjoy reading:

"YES, YES, it can drop by that much. That is a MARVELOUS drop, by ~ 95%. This is great. You are now down by ~99% after surgery and one chemo treatment. Keep it up!"

Isn�t his enthusiasm wonderful? It makes me feel like I�m a person to him and that he truly cares about my well-being, rather than just another surgical case to get through on a given day.

I also ran the numbers myself, and he�s right: Based on the CA-125 level of 9700 before surgery, the tumor burden has dropped 99.2 percent. In other words, only .8 percent of the cancer that was originally in my body remains. And that last remnant of squatters continue to have VERY BAD DAYS.

Before chemo on Wednesday, I was taken to a surgical suite to have what�s called a �port-a-cath� put in. The port is a small flat disk, inserted under the skin above your right breast and near your heart, with a silicon top. When you need chemo, the nurse simply pokes your skin and slips the needle into the silicon seal, which eliminates the need to thread a big needle into a vein every time you need treatment. The �cath� part of the device is a slim plastic catheter that emerges from the port and is threaded up a vein over my collarbone; it enables the chemo to enter the bloodstream throughout the body.

I debated on whether I needed this (many chemo patients do without, and I have nice, fat veins). But after asking questions of nurses and some survivors, I decided it had two benefits: First, it protects your veins from possibly collapsing from overuse, which tends to be a problem during later treatments. Because ovarian cancer usually recurs, it gives me a way to protect the veins for longer-term use. And second, the catheter is inserted into a major vein near the heart. So rather than having the chemo travel up a long vein from my wrist, it almost immediately moves into all the pumping blood around the heart, which may have the effect of diluting its toxic effects a bit and certainly means it gets circulated into my body quicker.

By the way, I did ask my oncologist whether I could have a higher chemo dose, and she said her practice is to give 10 percent above the norm to begin with. She said there is no proof that higher doses are more effective. At that point, we didn�t know the result of the CA-125 test, so I said let�s wait and see what happened�and if the number was disappointingly high, I was willing to try the higher dose.

One funny thing during the port-a-cath procedure: They gave me a Valium derivative to knock me out. Unfortunately, I�ve had a lot of Valium for my Meniere�s disease, so all it did was relax me a bit. I had the surgeon tell me exactly what he was doing every step on the way, and asked a lot of questions about port construction and placement. The nurse said I smiled through the entire procedure, which I guess indicates how effective I am at looking forward to every effort to heal me (I just told her I liked being the center of so much attention).

The chemo itself was again uneventful: I slept for two hours, ate a huge lunch that I had packed, meditated, and visualized the waves of chemo washing through my abdomen and flushing away the cancer cells.

The highlight of the day, other than Mark staying around to visit with me after surgery, was when my friend and former colleague Barbara Dunlay chauffeured me home. We sat on the sunny deck in the backyard with Maisie, our dog, and had a great chat for over an hour (and I wasn�t falling asleep, like last time!) Barbara also got me a beautiful hydrangea plant in a purple vase�without knowing that my favorite color is purple.

Then right after that, our boating friends Dean and Sarah Reinke arrived with a delicious homecooked meal, salad and dessert. Sarah herself is a breast cancer survivor. They�re the first of the chemo caterers that will be taking care of us this week.

Is it any wonder that I�m doing well? I am surrounded by all your love, and care, and expressions of concern. When you combine that with talented healers, and all the complementary therapies I�m pursuing on my own, there�s no question in my mind that I have the resources to beat this.

Thank you all. My heart overflows with gratitude for your support, and simply for the gift of being alive.

Love,

Meta

Tuesday, May 3, 2005 4:05 PM CDT

Oh migosh, ohmigosh, ohmigosh. I just heard from the chemo nurse about my CA-125 taken today, and believe it or not, the number was 82, down from 1780 before my first chemo treatment. (That'a a 95% drop with just one treatment.) The Mayo surgeon had said anything under 500 would be excellent, and under 300 would bode particularly well for my chances at remission. Because mistakes DO happen (I talked to a Mayo patient who got a wrong and very positive test result), I have a call back into the chemo nurse to make sure there wasn�t a mistake, and to ask if they could run the test again. I also want to ask her if she's seen a drop of this magnitude after one treatment before, and does it usually mean the person will be in remission.

But for now, I'm exhilarated, to say the least. Looks like all the love and concern, plus all the mind-body and complementary therapies I'm doing, may be working!

Speaking of which--gotta run. I have a mind-body healing session offered through a cancer resource program here in an hour.

Keep your fingers crossed--and the prayers a'goin.' I'll reconfirm or give you new information as soon as I can.

More chemo tomorrow, which I continue to look forward to . . .

Love you all,

Meta

Friday, April 29, 2005 5:23 PM CDT

Hi, everyone, and thank you for checking in. You have no idea how much your messages, cards and calls mean.

This week marked a return almost to normal, except for my Sinead O�Connor look. (The short fuzz on my head has begun to fall out, which means I�m beginning to look like my brother�s Ken doll, whose dark artificial �hair� became patchy after a lot of playing �War� and being tossed around.

Mark and I lifted weights on Sunday (gentle for both of us, since we�re both so out of shape), took our dog Maisie for a walk with friends and their dog, and then went over to another set of friends� house for an awesome dinner. I went to yoga class on Monday, and then to a yoga-Pilates combination class on Wednesday. I was amazed and pleased that I could do all the abdominal-focused Pilates exercises, although I had to stop and rest during a couple. My plan is to keep building up strength and muscle through exercise during the weeks when I�m not down from chemo. Not only is it important to be in Warrior Woman shape�I get the added benefits of stress reduction, admiring my head in the mirror, and socializing with my �gym friends.�

Tuesday, I got my blood tested to make sure the white and red cell and platelet counts are high enough so I can get my second round of chemo next Wednesday. (This will be standard procedure before each test. If the numbers are unacceptably low, there are drugs they can give me to help boost the levels.) The test results were great! I had started my first chemo session with red cell and platelet counts below normal�a result of the surgery I had March 18. On Tuesday, despite the fact that chemo can lower the counts, all my levels were well within normal. Hooray! It�s amazing to me, given the assaults on it the past six weeks, that my body is so eager to heal itself and does it so effectively. Keep it up there, girl!

I have a meeting with the oncologist, Patty Judson, on Tuesday. I plan to ask her, given how well I tolerated the first round of chemo, whether there�s any benefit to, and whether they ever, raise the chemo dose. I asked my surgeon the same question this week (see more below), and he said that sometimes the dose CAN be increased 20 percent or so, depending on what the dose was to start with, how the patient responds and what effect the first dose had on the cancer. So I hope we can try higher levels. I�ll let you know. During my visit, they�ll also draw blood to test my CA 125 levels, or what I think of as the �cancer score.� I should know those results either later Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

Yesterday, I went to the Mayo for my six-week post-surgical check-up. I stayed overnight the night before at my dad�s house on Lake Pepin, which was a great way to catch up with him and his wife Marcia. I really enjoyed getting up early on Thursday and watching the sun rise over the lake before I left.

My surgery incision checked out fine; I also had the opportunity to ask a lot of questions I hadn�t thought to ask before. Among other things:

I may actually feel better after chemo this time, given that I�m now pretty much fully recovered from surgery. (Of course, who knows what will happen if the dose in increased.)

If the cancer recurs and I need surgery again, I can spare another several feet of large intestine (they removed about 1 foot, 4 inches of the 6-foot length) before I would need a colostomy (whew!) You know, I just stopped and re-read that sentence, and I can�t believe how much my life and my concerns have changed over the past six weeks. First, it was how I was going to find real estate clients and where we�d live in retirement, and now it�s how much bowel can I function on, and what is that small lump under my incision (just a surgical knot, as it turns out, which should dissolve by itself).

For the perennially curious, like me: When your uterus, ovaries, etc., are removed, the small intestine simply slides over and takes up their space (I pictured myself with a weird hollow!). And did you know those organs weigh about a pound? Hmmm�there are better ways to lose weight.

There isn�t anything I could have done differently to detect the cancer earlier. I had specifically asked him about whether I would have been better off seeing a gynecologist for pelvic exams, rather than an internist. Turns out only 1 in 5,000 ovarian cancers are discovered through a pelvic exam. Unfortunately, most woman have no symptoms until the cancer starts spreading, free fluid in the abdomen builds up, and you get bloating (like me) and ultimately, changes in bowel and bladder function (I didn�t have these symptoms, either.)

Once you or a loved one do experience these symptoms, go immediately to a doctor and demand that ultrasounds be done. And if you do prove to have something abnormal, go to a gynecological oncology surgeon rather than to a gynecologist or surgeon�neither of whom have the specialized experience to remove the greatest possible amount of cancer.

I�m at higher risk of colon cancer and double the risk of breast cancer than the �normal� population. The good news is that the chemo I�m on is also used for treating breast cancer. So if there are any unruly cells getting ideas right now, they�re likely to be dead meat.

In an ideal world, it would be nice for the CA 125 to be below 500 this week�a more than 80 percent drop from its level of 1780 before the first chemo treatment. This would indicate that the cancer is very sensitive to the chemo, and would be a very positive indicator of my chances of remission. Please help pray for this result! At the same time, I wish the surgeon hadn�t volunteered this number, although I know it�s based on experience with a lot of patients. It could set Mark and me up for disappointment and anxiety if the tests don�t show this on Tuesday. As with so much else, I plan to take this one step at a time. Individual chemo responses vary so widely that it�s impossible to know what exactly my particular cancer cell type will do, or whether it might stay a bit high this time, and then plunge the next time around. I�ve also pointed out to Mark that the surgeon was wrong about when my bowel would begin working so I could leave the hospital�he thought five days, and another doctor told us 10, which was closer to the truth.

All for now. The bottom line is I feel and look great (the latter according to friends), and I�m eager for the next round of chemo. I am determined to beat the odds, and I am doing the right things to make the cancer as unwelcome as possible.

Love to you all,

Meta

Saturday, April 23, 2005 5:56 PM CDT

Hello again, everyone,

And thank you for your concern, attentions and sheer caring�both direct and unexpressed. This is the third time I have created this update today (the first two times, the Internet ate my entry), so count me as nothing if not determined and persistent!

I�m rapidly coming back to feeling normal (whatever that is, right now) following the effects of the chemo. Monday and Tuesday, the spirit was raring to go and enthusiastic about making all sorts of plans, but the flesh was only able to go as far as a walk around the yard or driving to appointments and making it to the waiting room. But now I�m rapidly coming back, to the point where I even scanned acreages and recreational properties in the real estate section today. My goal by next weekend to be able to paddle some gentle class of whitewater in a tandem canoe: The beginning of the season is a delightful mix of rediscovery of very old waters, a reconnection with boating friends and a reaffirmation of love of our sport for me and my other neoprene-reeking, adventure-seeking on-the-water friends. I want to get as much paddling in while my strength still permits.

Then, a week from Wednesday, on May 4, it�s back to the magical powers of those chemo liquids. Provided, that is, that blood tests this week show that my white and red blood cell counts have sufficiently rebounded for another cycle (I�m not expecting this to be a problem). And the day before chemo, on May 3, I�ll meet with the oncologist and have my blood tested for the CA 125 cancer marker. My hope and medical desire is that the number while decline from 1780 down to the hundreds. At the same time, I�ve read that some types of cancer actually show a temporary gain after the first chemo treatment!

I am confident down to my bones (or more appropriately, down to my abdominal organs, where thousands of small cancer beads lay scattered like malevolent glitter following the surgery) that the chemo is working, or that if not, something else will. After all, I am a large, healthy, energetic woman with major healing resources and the chemo knocked me flat. So what kind of time can those teeny cancer cells be having? If you�re inclined, please send your energy and prayers that my own T-cells and their allies Carboplatin and Taxol are rapidly killing the remaining cancer cells.

This has been a bit of a roller coaster week for me, which I expect will be typical, at least some times, in the coming months. Monday and Tuesday, I received more gifts, cards and expressions of care from in-laws, ex-laws, friends, clients and barely acquainted colleagues at Edina Realty (I added a new ability to my skills last year when I studied for and earned a real estate license, then joined an Edina office as a freelance contractor in January). The attentions you all pay to me frequently moves me to tears: Thank you!

Monday brought an inspired trilogy from my ex-husband, Bill Cannon: a book about the power of attitudes in healing or managing life-threatening diseases; a frank but inspiring memoir from a lyrical writer about his journey and survival from spinal cancer that has left him paralyzed from the chest down and in constant pain; and a DVD of the first two seasons of the acclaimed British TV comedy �The Office.� Bill, I am still awed and humbled by the dead-on insight and care you showed in assembling this gift. Tuesday, fragrant, jelly-bean-colored tubes of bubble bath from my ex-mother-in-law (Bill�s mom) and her daughter in Iowa. When I was hospitalized, Sharon said to me with unquestionable sincerity: �Honey, if I could trade places with you and spare you this, I would do it.� Truly one of the guardian angels God has planted along the way in my life. Now, if she only would relent and let us all get her a PC so she can join the realm of the Internet . . .

Also Tuesday, greatly appreciated cards from some of you and a package from stepdaughter Meg with two caps: One a fuzzy, rainbow colored cap she knit for me, just in time for the current cold snap (and to wear proudly out to dinner with friends on Friday night). The other made Mark and me laugh out loud: a no-nonsense black stocking cap with CIA embroidered large on the front, courtesy of a visit Meg made to the Spy Museum in Washington. D.C. This may well become my favorite headdress: I look like a lone SWAT commando doing reconnaissance out in front of the rest of my team. Cancer cells, here we come!

Wednesday, I was giddy with surprise and delight after being fitted with my new wig. It�s short like my hair, in a soft auburn color, and for some reason I look much more chic and glamorous than my own head of hair (while still not turning gray!) ever managed to help me look. I came home and preened for Mark, who promptly pronounced me �hot� (and wondered if my own hair might be coaxed to look this way). The wig is now safely ensconced on a dummy head on top of an armoire in our bedroom, safe from the predations of our cats and dog, and waiting to serve when the weather gets cold again and/or when I�m less enthusiastic about my new bald look.

Then Thursday, which was one of what I�m coming to think of as one of my sad days. True, I am determined that this cancer will not kill me, and I am consciously fanning the flames of my humor, zest for life and determination through daily decisions and choices, readings and reflection. But the fact that I have a cancer resident in me that is aggressive, persistent and has a very high mortality rate over a matter of a few years remains an earth-shattering, morale-pummeling truth. So sometimes the huge fear, grief and outrage I feel comes out and sits with me for a day, or an hour, and I (or Mark and I) cry. I am telling you this so you and I will both feel OK if you see me sad, or ill-tempered�you don�t need to feel at a loss for words or uncomfortable, and you don�t need to try to make it go away. And also, to let you know that your continued calls, e-mails, prayers and attentions continue to be a part of what keeps me going strong.

Love and gratitude to all of you,

Meta and Mark

Sunday, April 17, 2005 9:30 AM CDT

Happy Sunday all!

Whew. It turns out people weren't kidding when they said I'd have several days of exhaustion following chemo. I feel like I'm just beginning to come back from a weird period where someone sucked all the energy out of me, and then some.

Chemo was Monday, and I was told to expect a day of high energy on Tuesday before the steroids wore off. This didn't happen, alas, and my home office is still an unholy mess. Instead, I took two naps, talked to some people on the phone and had a friend drop by.

Wednesday, the Days of the Living Dead began. Suddenly it was a real effort to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom, or to go downstairs and make myself eat something for lunch. Any effort like this left me breathless: Walking from the living room to the kitchen (20 feet?) meant leaning on the kitchen counter until I could catch my breath. (I suppose this is the chemo wreaking havoc with my red blood cells, which carry oxygen to my body.) Even doing things like checking e-mail were WAY beyond me. I ended up sleeping about 18 hours a day through Friday--and making my bed buddies Marley and Petie pretty darn happy.

The nausea wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as I feared--I vomited briefly only three times over the three days (which is no big deal after all the hours-long attacks I've had with Meniere's disease). The other side effect is my joints ached in sort of a random manner--first the left hip, then my arm, then shooting pains in my right foot, then both knees . . .well, you get the idea.

Saturday, I began turning the corner--sort of. I stayed awake as many hours as I slept (I think) and visited with sis-in-laws Jill and also Cindy, who was in Washington, D.C., last week for a Peace Corps conference and made a special trip to see us over the weekend (thank you, sees-ter!) I also ate a whole bunch, including a gift of "Leslie's famous peach bread" (It should be famous, Leslie! And thank you, Dennis and Carol.)

Oh, and TA DA! Mark took me to an appointment to get my head shaved that I had made earlier in the week. Usually, your hair doesn't start falling out until the 11th day. But I didn't want to wait and see what it was like having my hair fall out in clumps (and having to clean it up--yuck), so I scheduled the head-shaving.

When I got to the appointment, it turned out my wig hadn't arrived. So the hairdresser urged me to wait until my wig came in (expected next week). She's helped a lot of chemo patients and said it's shocking for women to see themselves bald, and that they feel a lot better when they immediately can see themselves back to "normal" in a wig. I told her I was psyched up for it, though, and wanted to go a-head (pun intended). After the hairdresser and Mark said, "Are you SURE? Are you sure? Are you sure about this?" at least four times each, I won out and the deed was done. She was really VERY sweet, loving and concerned--at the same time, I wanted to have this in my control and I see it as my official transition into chemotherapy (sort of like Buddhists entering the priesthood). In my case, it's Warrior Woman girding up for the next big battle.

It turns out I don't look too bad--somewhere between Demi Moore in "G.I. Jane" and John Turturro in "O Brother Where Art Thou?" (Unfortunately, more like Turturro, I think.) Plus, I'm hoping to be able to whitewater boat at least once this season before the chemo really gets me down and enjoy the novelty of not having helmet hair at the end of the day.

I'm hoping to spend today catching up on calories and hydration and feeling a little stronger--I still am breathless walking across the room. I also want to find the beautiful purple knit cap that my stepdaughter Megan knit for me while I was in the hospital (in my messy office, no doubt).

Being this weak is dismaying and startling when I usually have such high energy. Mark said to make sure in this posting that I didn't sugar coat how "rough" (his word) this week has been. But I'm not so sure it hasn't been worse for him, having to watch me. When I read about the side effects other woman have experienced (dryheaving until they had to go to the emergency room with dehydration, for instance), I'm OK with what's happened this week. One chemo almost down, five to go. It's not great, or terrible--it just is, and the cancer cells definitely are having some very bad days. . .

God bless you all. Keep e-mailing, keep praying for us, and please feel free to call me at any time. You're not bothering me, and if I'm taking a nap I just take the phone off the hook.

Love,

Meta

Monday, April 11, 2005 5:10 PM CDT

Dear friends, supporters and all my guardian angels:

I had my first round of chemo today!!! I like what my new-found friend and (ovarian cancer survivor) Peggy Jennings noted yeterday: "Suddenly, your cancer cells are going to have a very bad day."

The procedure went just fine, at least for this time (keep your fingers crossed). The worst was having the long needle inserted and stuck in my forearm (and even that is not worth complaining about). The process took six hours: First, a half hour of IV steroids and antinausea drugs to counteract the drugs, then 3 hours of Taxol, which some people still have an allergic reaction to--I was fine); and finally 1.5 hours of Carboplatin, which can make you nauseated. The big and only side effect for me was being really groggy and sleepy, an effect caused by the preparatory IV drugs.

I dozed on and off and drank huge amounts of water each time I woke up (it helps lessen potential side effects.) The nurse joked that she was going to have me teach other patients how to hydrate properly. It helped that I felt dehydrated (despite having drunk almost a gallon of fluids yeterday),so I was thirsty anyway.

People had told me to bring some crackers for a snack because I wouldn't feel well enough to eat lunch--but that wasn't the case. I couldn't wait to get home and chow down lunch and take a respectable two hour nap! Many thanks to our friend Ann Helm, who chauffeured me from the hospital to home and had made the lovely quiche I had for lunch. And to my guardian angel Elin Raymond, who sent me a chemo visualization CD and generously gave me a portable cd player so I can listen and visualize a positive experience while I'm receiving chemo. And to my dad and Marcia, who took Mark and me out to lunch yseterday and provided dessert-- a homemade rhubarb pie (the Mart Gaertnier special). How better to celebrate spring than to sit in the sun on our new deck, eating hot pie and ice cream?

Now I'm snacking and drinking juice, waiting for Mark to get home for dinner and a DVD. (My life is pretty simple just now--eat, sleep, take pills and read.)

My response today bodes well, since the reaction during your first cycle is likely to hold true for future chemo infusions. Of course, it remains to be seen what the next week will be like--I've been told by several people I'll be exhausted, somewaht sick and mostly bedridden.

One day at a time, and I'm VERY grateful for today. I know everyone's prayers and thoughts are making a difference! In the meantime, I've planned a couple of errands and home chores for tomorrow (Tuesday) to take advantage of what I'm told will be a post-steroid energy high. (Too bad it only lasts 24 hours!) And I'm taking three different kinds of nausea medication plus a natural supplement to minimize this most commly experienced side effect.

Other news from today: My CA 125 cancer marker levels, which were 9,000 before the surgery, dropped to 1780 by mid-last week. The goal is to get them down to normal (34 or less) by the third treatment. We're on our way: The cancer cells will be experiencing what I hope are a lot of very bad days starting now!

On the downside, my red blood and hemoglobin counts are abnormally low due to the surgery and the 10 days I wasn't able to eat in the hospital. Thse carry oxygen throughout the body, so no wonder I've been feeling very fatigued--too tired to paddle on the Snake last weekend, unfortunately. (But I DID spend a lot of time out on our deck with family and friends.) Thse cells also tend to be reduced by chemo, so I'm eating lots of protein to build them up.

That's about all for now--I'm about ready for another nap. God bless you all: Your support and concern helps Warrior Woman and Mark keep our positive attitudes. I'll do another update later in the week, as I'm able.

Love,

Meta

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 11:53 AM CDT

NOTE: UPDATE TO BELOW, POSTED ON 4:30 P.M. WEDNESDAY. My first chemo is now officially scheduled for 7:30 this coming Monday, April 11. Great!!!!

Hi, and happy spring! Mark and I met with oncologist Dr. Patty Judson at the U yesterday (we only had to wait an hour and half, not so bad)to talk about chemo treatment and what we can expect. The good news: They were surprised by how well my surgical recovery is progressing and how good my incision looks. We got a lot of answers and heard some mostly positive news.

The bad news: The chemo infusion unit is booked up through mid-next-week. As we already knew, my cancer cells are Grade 4 (not to be confused with the stage of the disease itself, which is IIIc), which means highly aggressive and rapidly spreading. So I need to get in as quickly as possible. The manager of the unit is trying to work something out to get me in sooner if at all possible. I'll post an update once we know. In the meantime, here's what we heard (and probably more than you ever wanted to learn about this crappy disease):

There's a standard treatment for Stage III ovarian cancer. It involves a chemo treatment that lasts about 5 hours, during which I'll be infused with two different chemicals. (One makes you nauseated; the other makes your hair fall out. They also do a great job interfering with cancer cell functioning and division.) Then there's a hiatus of 20 days, to allow the body to recover and measure the effect on the cancer cells. Then this process-- what's called a "cycle" --starts over. I'll be getting the standard six cycles of treatment (which puts us through September or so).

Of the patients who have had all possible cancer tumors removed by a cancer surgeon (like me), 80+ percent have a positive chemo response and go into remission.(This is a higher percentage than we had read, so it's promising.) Women who are younger and healthy tend to do better (good news again). At the same time, most have a recurrence of the cancer, which can return anywhere from 3 months to a couple years or more. At that point, they hit it with chemo and or surgery again. Even if this works, the cancer is likely to return again. This is why the mortality rates tend to be so high.

They'll track my response to chemo through blood tests, watching white blood and red cell counts (important to keep them up), and something called CA 125, which measures proteins found on the surface of ovrian cancer cells. CA 125 is usually around 34, and it's not unusual for cancer patients, unfortunately, to have "normal" or slightly elevated levels, which is what makes the disease so hard to detect. My reading before surgery was 9,000+, which makes this a GREAT measure for tracking cancer response. Ideally, this number will drop into the 100s with the first couple treatments and be around normal after the third cycle. PLEASE HELP ME PRAY FOR THIS OUTCOME!

In terms of chemo effects, I'll lose all hair during the first cycle (if I don't shave my head first). I can expect to be exhausted from Days 2 to 7 after chemo, have to be careful of infection from days 7 to 11, when the white counts are at their lowest, and should feel fairly good after that. The effects of chemo add up, so I'll feel progressively worse as I complete each cycle (OK with me--just make sure you wipe those mini-tumors and cancer cells out!)

The most common side effect is nausea and vomiting, which they treat intravenously right before the chemo and with pills after. Because I have an ouch-y stomach, they're going to give me three different prescriptions: Then if one doesn't stop the nausea, I can immediately move on the next without waiting for another prescription to be phoned in. Acupuncture can also help, so I've lined up one in case I need her.

Other side effects can include bone and joint pain, sores in your mouth and throat, food aversions, easy bruising and bleeding, digestive problems and (usually temporary) nerve damage to your feet and hands. People's responses to chemo are highly individual, so we won't know how the drugs affect me until after I start.

That's about it. Mark and I had a wonderful time with friends Saturday night, and again up at the Snake on Sunday. While it's probably ambitious, I'm hoping to do a canoe trip down the flooded Snake with Mark this weekend. It's at a super fun level. (It's only a two hour trip, Dad, and not that hard a river for whitewater "experts" like Mark and me: Pretty much all I need to be able to do is sit up, enjoy the wild scenery, and help steer us around obstacles.)

God bless all of you for your cards, flowers, food, laughter, offers of resources and time, and inspiring stories of other cancer survivors. You are truly the wind beneath Mark's and my wings,

Love,

Meta

(aka "Warrior Woman"-- I'm thinking of drawing my own comic book series featuring a fierce bald-headed woman who knocks foes over with a gleaming stream of liquid. Watcha think?)

Saturday, April 2, 2005 2:26 PM CST

Hi, all, and thank you for checking in. I finally got an appointment with the oncologist at the University of Mn for next Tuesday. Because she is already overbooked, her chemo nurse and I agreed that I would show up at 1 p.m. and wait until she has time to see me (which could mean waiting 3-4 hours-- lots of time to read).

That's fine with me: I'm eager to discuss her chemo recommendations and get started. Depending on what she thinks about my surgical recovery, the nurse told me that chemo might begin as early as late next week.

I went on my first "outing" yesterday: I took our springer spaniel Maisie down to the park a block away and walked around it with her. I had to stop and rest twice, but it was great to be out in the fresh air and doing something normal. I also was rewarded for getting out: On the way to the park, a big healthy deer trotted out from a neighbor's back yard, stopped and looked at me, and then sprang across the sreet just 20 feet in front of me. Wow!

Last night, Mark and I were visited by a couple, Joe and Peggy Jennings, who generously came over to tell us about Peggy's own ovarian cancer experience (she's been in remission for two years) and answer our questions about chemotherapy and potential side effects. The discussion was SOOO helpful, with information like the name of a beauty salon that specializes in shaving heads for cancer patients as your hair falls out and how to numb the spot on the skin where the chemo goes in so there's less pain during the actual chemo process. Conversations like this seem utterly surreal: I can't believe some of the questions I hear myself asking. At the same time, it's great to benefit from the experience of a couple who has been through the process. Thanks so much, Joe and Peggy!And special thanks to Elin Raymond (who also recommended my gifted surgeon) for hooking us up.

Tonight some whitewater boating friends are coming over and bringing (mostly bland) food for a post-surgery celebration. Provided the weather and my energy hold, tomorrow Mark and I are driving up to our cabin an hour north of here, on the Snake River, to spend the afternoon. We'll see friends as well as starting a campfire down by the river, watching to see what waterfowl have returned and celebrating the beginning of the 2005 spring and summer season.

God bless all of you. Your support and prayers mean more than you can know. Keep 'em comin.

Meta

Friday, April 1, 2005 8:51 AM CST

Hi, all, and thank you so, so much for your messages, calls, prayers, concerns and healing wishes. It's wonderful to be home again, where I can enjoy the weather, trees, birds and plenty of what a friend calls heavy "kitty therapy."

My surgical recovery has been amazing, which I attribute at least in part to all the positive energy everyone is sending. Other than feeling a little weak, having a little soreness around the incision, and needing a nap every day, I feel better than I did before surgery. My body clearly is glad to have had such major reinforcements brought in to fight the cancer, and is rapidly preparing for the next step.

I should hear today when I'm meeting with the oncologist from the U. Once that meeting takes place, the chemo treatments (once every three weeks for six or more cycles) likely will begin in the next two weeks.

I am overwhelmed and grateful by all your support. Thanks to all of you who have sent cards, those who have volunteered to bring meals and former Honeywell colleagues who hardly knew me but have taken the time to send greatly appreciated words of concern and support. Friends have come forward to offer me resources ranging from acupuncturists (for post-chemo nausea) and homeopathic healers to offering to walk our dog or check our cabin at the Snake. Special thanks to Laurisa Sellers for sending me an amazing book on ovarian cancer that helps me know what to expect, provides tips and suggestions for getting through chemo,and arms me with great questions to ask my providers.

Love to all, and keep praying,

Meta

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 8:20 AM CST

Hi Everyone...

Meta made it home last night! Mike Lilja very kindly offered to drive to Rochester to pick her up. I needed to work on Tuesday. Thanks Mike and Mary for all your support.

She's doing well and loving up the cats and Maisie (and me). Our friends Dale and Laura Eggert stopped by last night and delivered our Springer Spaniel Maisie, who they'd been taking care of for us. It was great to see them.

So we had our little peaceable kingdom in the family room last night and things felt a bit more like normal than they have in the two weeks of having life turned upside down.

Several people have generously offered to bring dinner. If you're part of that group, the person coordinating it is Ellen Raymond. She can be reached at teraymond@visi.com
If you email her, please let her know when you would be available to do a dinner. Meta needs to avoid spicy food, too much salt, and heavy red meat.

Thanks for all the support.

Mark

Monday, March 28, 2005 9:38 AM CST

Hi Everyone...

The library was closed yesterday, so I couldn't post anything.

Today is Monday and Meta is feeling better and starting to eat solid foods for the first time. Who knew reconstituted scrambled eggs could taste so good!

She'll be here till tomorrow morning. I'm headed home this afternoon to grocery shop, get the dog, mail, pay bills, clean a bit etc. so when Meta gets here things will be somewhat back to normal.

Mike Lilja has given us a gift of his time...he'll drive down tomorrow and get Meta to bring her home. I'll get in a day of work to stay up with my clients at Change Masters.

Thanks again for all your prayers and thoughts.

Meta and Mark

Saturday, March 26, 2005 3:43 PM CST

Last night and today have been huge. Meta's body now seems to be working again. She's passed gas, which may not seem like a big deal, but it was the trigger for her to start getting liquids by mouth again. (If she can keep everything going, she'll get pudding tonight.) It's been nine days since the surgery and she's only been on an IV drip with some sugar in it that entire time.

She's getting Jello, broth, and tea now...and just got the tube removed from her stomach (thru the nose...ugh!) Her spirits are greatly improved as you might guess.

We were disappointed to learn she won't be released until Monday or Tuesday. We'd hoped for Sunday.

Once we're home, she'll have a chance to get stronger for two to three weeks, then start in on chemotherapy...and take things a step at a time from there.

Thanks so much to all of you who love and care for her. Your prayers and support have meant a great deal to both of us.

God bless you.

Mark

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