It’s All Relative

Okay.

That’s my answer. That’s the post. Okay. It’s not fantastic like it was in January. And it’s definitely not horrible like the score from last Thursday. It’s okay. And that’s good enough.

I’ll give you the hard numbers, so you can make some sense of this roller coaster we’re forced to ride each day. Austin’s first GFR score following his December surgery was 83. Then it rose to 99 in January. Last week’s results? 30. Yeah, 30. Today it was 66.

This is pretty much what we expected. I would have been disappointed if 66 was what we were told after last week’s test. It’s not great; it proves that we are indeed harming that kidney with chemo and radiation. But after what we thought we might be up against with a 30 (removing the kidney, starting a long two years of dialysis), 66 is good enough. It’s all relative after all.

We can continue with in-patient chemo as planned this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The dose will have to be adjusted, as this particular drug is the hardest on the kidney. But we can carry on, at least through April, to the end of our scheduled 18 weeks.

And then? Well, and then we’ll have to sit down with our doctors and look long and hard at the benefits versus the risks of adding another 12-week round. We’ll have to make those awful decisions again, trying to peer into a cloudy crystal ball and predict whether more chemo will do more good or more harm, whether the cancer is gone or just in hiding, at what cost the kidney is worth saving, at what cost the cancer is worth attacking.

Not really looking forward to that. But for today, it’s all okay.