Feel like I could be riding faster!

Personal stuff, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

It’s getting a bit frustrating; for the first time in ages, I’ve been feeling like I’ve got the ability to push harder on the climbs, air it out a bit, but it wouldn’t be kind to put any distance between myself and people I ride with who normally would leave me in the dust on a longer climb. I can’t maintain a hard pace for a long time, since I run out of air (maybe, finally, getting that looked into mid-December), but the legs do feel like they want to go. But ex-pilot, who’s retired (and thus “ex”-pilot), has been putting in daily rides and is sometimes a bit run down on Tuesday & Thursday-mornings.

I was telling Kevin )ex-pilot) on this morning’s ride how I had been thinking, been a bit concerned really, that the 2024 trip to France might have been the last, because I was running out of what it takes to get up the big climbs. But that’s not how it played out. We had a few challenging rides and I held up fine, even on the ultra-gnarly Col de la Bonette.

Of course, any sense of progress comes crashing to a halt shortly, when I’m off the bike for 2+ weeks, on vacation with Karen (my wife), a non-cycling vacation traveling to Amsterdam for a day, then train to Paris (was supposed to be for two days but there’s a just-announced train strike that requires we move things forward a day) and then a 9 day cruise ending in Barcelona. This is a trip that didn’t seem all that likely to happen at the time I put things together, as we just didn’t have a good feeling about where Karen’s Stage IV cancer was going to go. I booked it about as late as I could (August, for a mid-November cruise… people typically book their cruises about a year ahead of time, sometimes more!) and navigated the myriad of rules regarding travel insurance that might apply, and not, based on Karen’s cancer. But now, just 9 days away from flying to Amsterdam, things are looking really good. Karen had a Cat Scan last week that showed no progression, and it was read by the amazing interventional pulmonologist (who saved her life last January) who concurred that her lungs were looking good and there was no need for him to perform another clean-up of her airways.

Staying on the cancer stuff, it’s tough interrupting treatment that has clearly kept her alive. You worry about what’s going to happen without treatment for a month. You try to rationalize things, as in, maybe the body needs a break from toxic chemical so it can endure another year of treatment. We’re literally praying that’s the case; we don’t want to go into the next scan and see things not-so-good and be thinking we shouldn’t have gone on vacation!

Finally, some good news- Keytruda has brought Karen’s cancer to a stand-off

Personal stuff

Not been a great week for me, but we got a great cancer scan for Karen, and there’s no way to spin that as anything but a good trade.

Me? I went boom, a zero-speed fall on my bike, in a parking lot of all places, that sent me to the ER to make sure I didn’t break any bones in my hand. Fortunately not, but the x-ray came with a description reading “severe degenration” of a joint in my thumb. I really didn’t like reading the word “severe.” It’s the only spot in my body where I feel arthritis, and it’s not pleasant (definitely interferes with work too!). It came out of nowhere about 4 months ago, although it had been noted on x-rays that there was an issue, some time back, but no symptoms. I enquired about it with my GP and she asked if I wanted cortisone injections. Um… no, I want it to stop getting worse, and maybe get better! I don’t want to just cover up the pain and have to take ever-stronger measures (pain killers?) to deal with it down the road. Well, we’ll get this story updated another day.

Karen’s story is by far the more-important one. Almost exactly a year ago, last December, her cancer decided it was time to run wild and did a number on a lung, messing up the airways, even causing that lung to collapse completely. She got so weak that the treatment scheduled for her was put on hold… it was looking like she might have weeks, maybe even days in early January. Fortunately a brilliant pulmonary interventionist at Kaiser Oakland figured out the collapsed lung (which apparently just looked like a big blob of cancer) and restored her lung function to almost-normal by getting rid of the cancer where it had intruded into her airways. She’s gone back for one “tune-up” since, and the current scan will be sent to him to see if there’s benefit to another.

But for now, we’ve got a full CT scan that appears to show no cancer spread whatsoever, nothing progressing for the past 9 months or so I think? Keytruda, a crazy-expensive immunology drug ($191,000/year) plus two types of chemo… it seems to be working! There’s no cure for Stage IV cancer, but it’s not unheard of for some Keytruda patients to show no evidence of disease (cancer) for years at a time, and that’s obviously what we hope for. Until something better comes along that might get rid of cancer entirely!

But for today, the vacation we scheduled August 5th, if full-on! Most people schedule big vacations far in advance, and for cruise ships, sometimes years. Thankfully that was never my style so having to look for last-minute opportunities, taking advantage of windows in health where things look good, isn’t that unusual for me. In fact, our very first cruise vacation, in October/November 2021, I didn’t even have an idea of doing a cruise until I was off at a bicycle business function and something caught my eye as the world started struggling to get back to normal (due to Covid). That was late July if I recall correctly. And yes, it was way way WAY cheaper back then, because people were so scared to travel.

We leave on Sunday, November 17th, flying into Amsterdam via Denver and Munich, arriving Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning we see Anne Frank’s house (which has been on Karen’s bucket list forever), then a canal tour (covered boat since November isn’t a great weather month for Amsterdam!) and then the main art gallery, the Reik-something or other before getting on a train to Paris. One full day in Paris, then the next morning a train to LeHavre cruise port (about two hours away).

The cruise itself wraps around Portugal and Spain and will allow us to visit Gibraltar, a port that was skipped on a prior cruise, but most importantly, the port of Cadiz (Spain) where we’ve scheduled a tour of a goat cheese farm! We finish in Barcelona, which is now one of Karen’s favorite cities. Have already got tickets for La Sagrada Familia, the huge cathedral that’s been in the process of being built/finished for… how long? March 18, 1882. That’s just crazy!

But not as crazy as Karen passing up another expiration date soon. For her particular cancer, the “norm” statistically is about 8 months past diagnosis. That’s it. 8 months. Fortunately those statistics don’t seem to be up-to-date! Before Keytruda, there really wasn’t much hope. Now, I’m thinking there ought to be a different type of calendar, one where you celebrate each anniversary of life, every 8 months.