5. The Plan

I was connected with Dr. Addison Tolentino, an oncologist. He stopped in on Thursday night. He, by the way, was Dave Lorang’s oncologist from back when Dave went through his journey. I had been watching that on the hospital TV during my stay. I knew Dave from SFFR and have always respected the way he handled his journey. Dr. Tolentino told us that this was an aggressive cancer – he told us what to sort of expect, and he talked about averages for life span etc. Each case is different, so how do you tell someone that, but we all want to know. I will be home here resting and building up strength for about 10 days. On March 12^th I go in to get the sutures out of my head. That same day I get fitted for a radiology mask to get my radiation treatments. Dr. Tolentino will put me on a chemo oral dose that I take every day once the radiation treatments start. I will get to have about 15 minutes of radiation on the entire brain 5 days a week for 6 weeks starting in mid-March. Those will tire me out and eventually cause me to lose my lovely gray mat of hair. Not a huge deal. I was once known as the broom headed troll on the fire department. Now I will be the bald troll for a time. Anyway, after that first major round, we get a break. There will be some MRIs occasionally to see how things progress. We will stay on stronger and stronger chemo meds for a time. After a while, the chemo drugs will not do any good and become too strong to allow me to function effectively. Then we sort of get comfortable and hit that last leg. We will end up in hospice and go from there. I did ask both doctors about the type of death expected – they both said I will just sleep more and more, and then just drift off. What I lovely way to get to die. I love to sleep. Really, I love naps, and now I get to nap a lot.