Last Resort

Wednesday January 27, 1993

Up at 7 to the alarm. I slept well but wish I could sleep another hour. I feel pretty good again today. I prayed last night for several good days in a row, so I can go to the melodrama Thursday night and camping this weekend. I hope my prayers are answered.

At Dr. Semrad at 10:30 he says he doesn't think the kemo has done anything in the past 2 weeks and will check again in 2 weeks and may take me off the pump. He suggested we may want to try Taxol next. I said I think of that as the last resort. He pretty much agreed.

I felt down and depressed when we left. We went to Marie Callendar's for salad and then to Costco. I was so sure this kemo would be the one. Could I pray more?

Mom's last mention of chemotherapy using taxol was September 2, 1992, almost 5 months earlier. She wrote, "I'd have to go to UCLA once a week for a 2-day stay to have it injected and the cost would be thousands for us to pay." At that time Taxol was a fairly new chemotherapy drug and probably not covered by her medical insurance. Was the cost what kept her from fighting her cancer with the most aggressive treatment, or was it the possible side effects? Maybe it was the inconvenience of spending 2 days per week at UCLA. From all the traveling Mom and Frank did and the number of times each week they went out to dinner, it did not seem that money was scarce for them.

Taxol

Thursday May 28, 1992

I have a nagging feeling that Frank should go with me today to see Dr. Schwartz. He doesn't offer and I hate to ask. He has SO much to do at the rental house. Dr. Schwartz has bad news. My CAT scan from 2 weeks ago shows 2 new tumors in my lower abdomen. One is on my bowel and one is a lymph node. Both are the size of a quarter. This means my current chemo medicine is not doing the job. He would love to put me on Taxol right now but it is in such short supply he can't get it. Taxol is brand new and really works well about 30% of the time. He has one more drug to try and then I should try to get Taxol at UCLA.

Frank, Gary, Maria and boys and I go out to pizza for dinner. They take the bad news real well.

Mom's intuition was right on. She knew the news was going to be bad because of the nagging pains she had been feeling in her abdomen. As I blog Mom's journal entries, every once in awhile I come across an "if only" entry, and today is one of those days. "If only" Mom had been able to get Taxol started at this time, she might have beaten the cancer. Taxol was discovered in a U.S. National Cancer Institute program at the Research Triangle Institute in 1967 when it was isolated from the bark of the Pacific yew tree, which grows in the Pacific Northwest. When it was developed commercially by Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) the generic name was changed to paclitaxel. It is used to treat patients with lung, ovarian and breast cancer. From 1967 to 1993, almost all paclitaxel produced was derived from bark from the Pacific yew, the harvesting of which kills the tree in the process, so there were ecological concerns to harvesting the bark and therefore a very limited supply of the drug. By the end of 1995 paclitaxel was produced semisynthetically and the yew tree was safe from harvesting. At this time the drug became much easier to get. Unfortunately, this was too late for Mom.