Dating Myself

For one year in the 1990s, I taught English to high school and middle school students at a private academy, the sort of place where entering the "college of one's choice" (aka Harvard) was the expectation of each would-be graduate. One of the things fifth graders learned at this school, besides, ya know, rocket science and Advanced Mandarin, was to keep a calendar. From early on in the school year, those little polo-and-khaki-wearing wonders were encouraged to fill in their school-issued Franklin Planners with assignment due dates and extra-curriculars and whatever else people used to put in Franklin Planners. It seemed pretty apparent that this was early training for world domination, and knowing what some of these kids are up to now, it seems to have worked.

I didn't keep a calendar until graduate school, and then it was just to help me remember when I was supposed to go see my therapist.  Honestly, for a long time, I was pretty good at keeping a lot of that sort of stuff in my head. Lunch dates. Car and doctor appointments. What was on the syllabus for next week. I kept a sketchy date-book through my 20s & 30s, but relied just as much on a scattering of post-it notes and appointment cards slid under refrigerator magnets to keep me on track. Then, somewhere along the line, the requirements for me to be certain places or to do certain things at certain times outstripped my brain's and the refrigerator magnets' ability to keep them and me all wrangled. I think it's no coincidence that this happened around the same time I got a smart phone, which clearly, has made me dumber. Anyway, now I put EVERYTHING in my phone, information which somehow, through the cloud, also magically gets transferred to my laptop.  And for some of these things, I also create "alerts" so the phone can warn me days, hours, and minutes in advance of upcoming commitments.

But for some dates, I don't need reminders. Like Friday, July 6. Blood draw. And Monday, July 9, scans. And Tuesday, July 10, scan results and strategy session with Dr. Peacock. So sure, today is July 4, or actually, the small hours of July 5, and I've got scanxiety. And that scanxiety has been made worse by the fact that the folks in Boston have asked me to withhold a couple of doses of the medicine due to the neuropathy that has developed in my hands. And I know I shouldn't be too anxious about this, because neuropathy is a known AE of this drug, and, it is, after all, a DOSING trial, which means there will likely be adjustments in DOSAGE, duh! On the phone, the nurse practitioner assured me (without laughing!) that the cancer will not come roaring back twice as strong in two days because I skipped a couple of doses.

But still, the mind churns. This will be the first set of scans I've had since starting the lorlatinib, the first since the last scans which discovered brain mets and progression in the lungs. I remind myself, on the whole, I've been feeling good, that I haven't had any symptoms suggesting a rapid cancer progression anywhere. Why, just last week in New Orleans, my husband and I trekked through over 15 miles of urban hiking in just a couple of days. And last night, we went dancing.

Of course, it's true that my brain is definitely working more slowly; sometimes when I try to multitask, I just can't. For instance, I can't carry on a conversation while looking up the weather or directions on my phone. Also, my speech needs to be slower and more careful when I get excited, or I trip up on words; it's like my word retrieval mechanism can't synch with my thoughts.  I liken the feeling of my brain slowing in those moments to the sound effect in sci-fi movies when the spaceship is suddenly caught in a tractor beam and slows down --whoompwhoomp... whooomp......
whoomp.  But, is that slow thinking caused by a tumor, or by the medicine? Dopiness is a known AE of the drug, so I choose to believe my whoompy thinking is caused by the lorlatinib, and that the tumors are being held in check or even resolved. Still, only the scan will tell us for sure.

In the meantime, I can still enjoy the cicada songs and the stillness of the July night, finally quiet now after hours of fireworks. And tomorrow (or actually later today), I've got a car appointment, a massage, and a date for tea, or at least that's what my calendar says.