In sickness and in health

 Like a picture slowly coming into focus, Eric is improving every day. He is talking more, awake more, more like himself. He is still confused about some things that would not have previously confused him and has some word-finding difficulties, but night and day compared to three weeks ago. It turns out patience is the best medicine for anxious wives. The speech therapist has been working wonders. 

Regarding the tumor, we have mostly good news! It is a stage 2 oligodendroglioma. It has an IDH2 mutation (will respond to targeted therapies when needed), a TERT promoter variant, and the 1p/19q codeletion that is the hallmark of the less aggressive oligo (versus an astrocytoma, which has worse prognosis). This is overall good news (though TERT promoters may worsen prognosis in higher grade tumors, as far as I can tell, they don't impact prognosis for low grade oligos). This means that with all these favorable genetics, the median survival may be over 15 years, and that was before these targeted biologics came out.

If you're going to have brain cancer, it's the kind to have. 

We are still waiting on the post-op MRI Wednesday to make sure all the tumor was removed, but the surgeon felt confident it was. We also meet with the neuro oncologist Wednesday to discuss treatment vs watch and wait. We think they will likely recommend just watch and wait, as they will probably want to reserve treatments for recurrence so they have options if/when it comes back (which is still likely someday, unfortunately).

It's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me. It was harder than I thought it would be to see Eric so incapacitated. Even if you've seen terrible things like I have, it's different when it's your spouse. But things are getting back towards normal now. There are still some cognitive deficits, but it has only been 3 weeks. I'm optimistic everything will be back to at least 95% normal by 8 weeks, which is when we are hoping Eric will be able to go back to work so he can avoid going on disability.

In other pleasant news, we are going to Costa Rica for Christmas for vacation on December 20, and I am extremely excited to see a wild sloth. If I have to roam the rainforest at night for days I don't care; I will see a sloth by the time we come back. I love sloths. They aren't my favorite animals (that would be red pandas), but they are my spirit animals. I feel a kinship with these creatures that just want to sleep and eat and hang out in the sun all the time, because that sounds pretty good to me too.

We've all been sick with gastroenteritis and bronchitis, so it's time for a tropical break. I'm tired of cleaning up puke and boogers. Palm trees and sunshine sound better to me. 

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