It has been just a few months since I put together an update, and this one will be short, but I wanted to share with you.

I am feeling much better, on the whole.  I began taking Iressa, the new cancer drug for lung cancer, in November 2004, and I only took it for a month, but that was quite long enough, thank you.

I had quite a severe reaction to it, and my oncologist was all excited about that!  It turns out that if you do not have a reaction to it, it is probably not working for you, so the reaction meant that it was working quite well.  My reaction was so severe that he said it probably would have killed me if I had not stopped taking it.  They had told me I'd probably have a rash.  Okay, I've had rashes before, but there are rashes and there are rashes, and I've never seen anything like what I had.  It was as if my body protested mightily against it.  The rash took several forms and eventually covered my body from face to toe, and under my skin I "crawled" something awful with a terrible itching that nothing alleviated in any way.

Just about the time I stopped taking Iressa, a new drug called Tarceva came on the market.  It supposedly does the same thing Iressa did (confuses cancer cells so they do not know what to feed on, and they die), but has some advantages.  The theory now seems to be to begin with a small dosage, and increase the dosage to the point where you can stand it, but it is not unbearable.  I am working at this time to get on a program so I can take this. It is even more expensive than the Iressa, which was $1800 per month for one pill a day.

Why am I willing to subject myself to this, and why do I keep going?  That's simple.  I love the Lord, my family, and life, and I'm not ready to give up on any of them.

Now for the good news!  I am feeling much better now, over the effects of medication, and my blood pressure has also dropped a lot, so they took me off some of that medication, too. I am still working my way back from all my activity... it is only since November that I could get up at all, and at that point I was doing good to breathe.  I am able to move around the house and do most things now, and I try to intersperse movement with sitting, so I spread it out over the day.  I am up at about 5 am each morning and put in long days, until about midnight, but I take a nap during the day, which gives me the energy I need to keep going.

We took a couple of days and visited eastern Oregon, and I withstood the trip much better than we expected, so the next weekend we drove over to the Portland/Salem area where we visited children, grandchildren, and worked at a gold show over the weekend.  I felt great, and was able to stand on my feet out in the aisle most of the day (it was too crowded right in the booth) talking with people, shaking hands, passing out flyers, etc., and although I crashed shortly after dinner, I was raring to go again the next morning.  This is a marked improvement over my condition of just one month ago, and we are very encouraged over it.  We traded our minivan and old truck in on a new one while we were over there, so we can pull our little camp trailer, and we're ready to go now.  We're looking forward to a great summer.

I've been spending long hours on the computer working on all these websites, forming a nonprofit corporation, answering email, etc., so I have to stay focused to also move around during the day.  I am busy and productive, and I feel so much better for being able to be so. I have always worked hard, and the forced inactivity of the past few years have been difficult for me.  I'm just not used to not having "too many" things to do in a day.

Okay, that was the good news, now this is the bad news. Just when things are looking better on the cancer front, another health problem has loomed on the horizon.  If you've been reading my journals you know that I have spent much of the past two - three years being ill, and last year I was confined to bed for four straight months. This inactivity has escalated a genetic predilection for poor circulation.  Something many of you do not know is that I still smoke cigarettes (I know... but if I could have quit I'd have done so long ago.  I've been quitting since I was 37), and this has exaggerated that problem even more.  

I just recently saw a "vascular" specialist, and he has told me that if I do not quit smoking, I will begin to lose toes, then feet, and then legs, if I live that long.  And I don't mean that it will take a long time for this to happen, what I mean is that I may not survive the amputations with my impaired health due to the chemo and radiation I had for the cancer. You cannot have 37 radiation treatments without having it do some damage.  It has impaired my bronchial tubes, somewhat, shrinking them.

My lungs are impaired from all that, all the chemo treatments, and from smoking... I am not a good candidate for surgery.  So, I have another hard decision to make.

This specialist says that if I quit smoking the condition will improve, and with a program of walking exercise, it is possible it could even disappear.  As it is now, it is a pretty severe problem.  Since we do not live in a temperate climate (our winters here can be almost as severe as interior Alaska), and since I have some pretty severe allergies to the pine trees that cover our landscape when they shed pollen, I need to get a treadmill so I can exercise daily.

I just saw this doctor two days ago, and I'm still trying to absorb all that he told me.  I ask all of you for your prayers and encouragement as I face another big life change, and I must tell you I am fearful of this terrible addiction hanging over me.  I am blessed that I have the mighty Lord to hold onto, lean on, and turn to in my need, and that is what I am doing.

I am also blessed to have a wonderful husband who is much encouragement, much help, and full of love to help me, and I have many, many friends to encourage me.  With all this I am praying to be successful with this.  I saw the doctor on March 14th.  Consequently, I have set a date of April 14th on which to quit smoking.  

Please, everyone, pray for me, I need it.

Marcie Foley
Central Oregon
March 16, 2005

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