a new chapter

the last couple of days have been a struggle, with d not able to walk and barely able to stand with help, but today she's up again and doing short walks [unassisted, but with walker] around the house and able to feed herself again.  thanks, we think, to a blood test discovery that her phosphate level was way low and yesterday we started a med to correct that issue.  seems to be working.  we're hoping for increased strength over time.  chemo is finished, she's not able to handle it anymore, which is to say that additional chemo treatment would likely bring an end of life well before the cancer might.  that means the cancer is no longer treatable by conventional western drug medicine techniques, at least until something better than the current chemo drugs comes along.  radiation for specific new bone spots is still a possible option, and possibly for a larger tumor at other sites should one be discovered.  the liver is more difficult to deal with because the tumor sites are spread out and small rather than one large site.

so d now qualifies for enrollment in hospice care which we have done.  hospice takes over responsibility for general, non curative, treatment of cancer related issues, mostly pain management.   all other medical issues will continue to be handled by our primary care system, scripps clinic.  it is clear from the blood tests that the cancer is ramping up and that d's liver is not working as well as it should thanks to the cancer there.  we may not stay with hospice if they are unwilling to do blood tests every couple of weeks and adjust meds appropriately.  there is some question about that. fortunately, we can bail out of hospice anytime without penalty. then we would be back in the general hmo treatment arena as we have been in the past.  but we would lose access to the hospice in home services and equipment until we reenter the hospice program, which can be done at any time.  it is all a trade off, no easy choice.

we are now free to explore alternative healing techniques that might have been in conflict with the chemo.  we do not plan on chasing every claimed cure, but d has done a lot of research into alternative techniques, and some of them seem to be worth pursuing. tomorrow we will see an MD with a Tibetan healing background.  we still expect to make the santa barbara workshop next week.  after that is unknown at the moment.

and that is all the news we have for now.