kvetching up

 Entry 1     9:03 a.m. Jenny is away at VM to do blood work, in advance of the chemo regimen which she begins today. The chemotherapy is called GTX, and consists of 3 drugs: gemcitabine, a taxol derivative, and capecitabine. The capecitabine is in pill form, and is taken daily. She also receives an infusion once a week for three weeks. Then she has a bye week, no pills, no infusion. It is 12 weeks in total. The treatment regimen, which I believe I discussed in an earlier journal entry, has been around for a very long time, since before the breakthroughs that increased the 5 year life expectancy to 2.9 percent. 2.9 percent.  Gemcitabine has been the go to drug for treatment since the 1990s, but doesn't do much, truth be told. It isn't completely ineffective, but most people die at 4.5 months on the regimen, so, it doesn't do much. 5-FU with cisplatin is the wonder treatment, that works until it doesn't. The alternating between the gemcitabine regimen and the...

  Entry 1    9:10 a.m. He had bought a large map representing the sea,    Without the least vestige of land: And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be    A map they could all understand.     -Lewis Carroll, "The Hunting of the Snark" Absurdity. Futility. The inexorable need to make a mark. The inescapable fact of death. I run to philosophy when I am lost, hoping it will provide me with a path to follow. Hardship, disappointment, loss, we all face these things. I believe, like Camus, that if we embrace the absurdity of our condition, we can find a purpose in a life devoid of meaning, in an unregarding universe. The contracts I negotiate today will be replaced when I have left, and will go on being replaced and forgotten long after I am gone, until the world is drowned in the next diluvial event. If I can find acceptance in this impermanence, this markless life, I can shed the crushing malaise, that is always waitin...