Everything I Know About Carpe Diem I Learned from My Dog
Two-and-a-half weeks ago, bright and early on a Sunday morning, Buttercup, our 8-year-old pup, suffered a stroke. On Saturday she was chasing tennis balls in the backyard, the next morning she couldn’t stand or control half her body. For a day and a half we weren’t fully sure it was a stroke, and the other possible option - a brain tumor - had a much worse prognosis. While we waited, I thought a lot about Saturday and whether that was the last time I’d seen her lying in the grass, enjoying the sunshine, chasing a ball. Was that her last good day ?
I’ve been through chemo, radiation, stem cell transplant and 14 years of cancer, and soon, I’m going back to the mat, this time for CAR T-cell treatment, but everything I know about carpe diem I learned from my dog. Many cancer patients talk about how their cancer diagnosis taught them to truly appreciate each day, each moment - to seize the day, as it were.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot these past two weeks; trying to figure out whether my long, dare I say journey (I hate that word), has made me more appreciative of the moments. I’m surely more grateful for the life I live, my family (four-legged ones included), friends, and many parts of my life. But I’m not so sure I’d fully chalk that up to my cancer diagnosis. Some of it is just that I’m older and perhaps a little wiser than I was a couple decades ago. Cancer, and this blog, has given me the outlet to reflect, and perhaps through the course of that introspection, dragged my mind into greater awareness of the good moments of each day - the big ones and the little ones. But if I’ve become more aware, it’s been a gradual, incremental tug. It’s not as if I was diagnosed one day, and woke up the next thinking I’m going to live every day to its fullest. I’ve had plenty of less than full days in these last 14 years. But Buttercup’s stroke was like an on-off switch. And I’m happy to say her recovery in the last weeks has been remarkable.
At left, a scared Buttercup in the hospital hours after her stroke. At right, two weeks later, relaxing after chasing some tennis balls with her brother Rocco.
The timing of our dog’s health crisis was both awful and perfect. This last month I’ve simply been waiting for the start of the CAR T-cell process and so we’ve both been able to be home to care for her as she recovers. If it happened a month sooner, or later, it would been much more difficult. .
The last month of waiting, since they collected my T-cells would have been tough if I haven’t been feeling so damn good. I don’t know of any symptoms that I have and it reminds me somewhat of my early days of diagnosis when there were no outward signs of my lymphoma as we went into my first round of chemotherapy. But here we go nonetheless.
Radiation Therapy and T-Cell Collection
My last post, in which I talk about the T-Cell Collection process.
On Monday, I’ll get a port placed for the chemo and eventual infusion of my supercharged T-cells, as well as some bloodwork and CT scans. I’m very curious to see what the scans show. I hope they are as unremarkable as they can be. Although it may seem like a scan with only small amounts of cancer may invite the question: Why go through with this treatment? I’m sure that the scan will show something, and regardless of what’s visible on a scan, I’m sure there are some cancer cells running rampant somewhere in my body. Let’s sic those engineered T-cells on them.
This next week will hopefully be uneventful. “It’s only chemo,” I may have said earlier this week. But I’m a bit nonchalant because everything happening this week I’ve done before. I’ve had a port. I’ve had lots of CT scans and I’ve had these chemo drugs before and at higher doses so I hope I will tolerate it well. It’s the side effects of the CAR T infusion happening in a week that’s got me a little anxious - possible fever, fatigue, nausea, headache, and neurotoxicity, among other things. Some people have trouble finding words and are confused, which is why I can’t drive for at least a month, need to be near the hospital, and must have someone with me. It’s an unknown path for me, and as we know, the unknown can be scary. But I’m hopeful that I continue to have low tumor burden (i.e. not a lot of lymphoma) as that seems to correlate with less side effects, and that we come through the next couple weeks as smoothly as we did radiation and many treatments before this.
If I’m up to it, I hope to post regularly throughout the process. But if not, I’ll see you on the other side.