Friends,
You might recall from our last update that, back in October, our heroine found herself at another crossroads – looking at a pile of treatment questions and decisions. The summer’s chemo regime was losing its charms, and its effectiveness. Dea’s medical team wanted to pause and explore the possibility of finding a clinical trial that might offer new avenues of treatment. A couple bone biopsies later, after scrutinizing Dea’s genomic biomarkers and scouring more scans than you can shake out of a surgical mask, a plan is emerging for the next phase of treatment. She wanted to share those plans with you.
The search for a clinical study mostly didn’t pan out. Dea’s team hasn’t found a study that matches her tumor genomics, but they are still evaluating one CAR T-cell study. While they investigate further, Dr. Linden has prescribed a new course of chemotherapy to put the brakes on a constellation of tumors that have recently grown in size, number, and activity.
This week Dea will begin her first intravenously administered chemotherapy. Of course there is a lot that the team cannot predict about this treatment, but the crystal ball is showing some details pretty clearly: The treatment will involve a bunch of driving back and forth to the Poulsbo infusion clinic, and a bunch of time receiving the drip. The weekly treatments are scheduled for Wednesdays, with separate Tuesday blood tests. Many people who use this medicine get nauseous, fatigue is likely, and some people get a minimalist new hairdo out of the deal. Dea won’t know the extent of those side effects until she gets full into it, but she is leaning forward to go in big, and go in strong (I’m not kidding, her let-me-at-it meter is running at redline).
It looks like this will be a heads-down gritted teeth slog. Dea is thinking that she won’t be in phone chatting condition, but she does welcome texts and emails. We’ll keep folks updated here and, if we see openings to socialize, we can flag those as well. Dinner support is a tremendous blessing (thank you cooks!), and if you ever need to see the current sign-up sheet, it’s here.
Dea Perry, your spirit is an inspiration and a pile of lessons. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
