Marshall's Cancer Updates

It's been over a year since my first diagnosis (1/24/2023) and just shy of a year since my first staging at Stage IV (3/3/2023). I'm still here. February 7th: Mojo Nixon died today. Or was that yesterday, I'm not sure. It was probably after midnight and this side of the International dateline, so I'll assume it's today. For those who don't know, Mojo Nixon was an iconoclastic rockabilly/psychobilly satirist who got his start in the mid-80s, taking aim at Reagan era corporate America with songs like "Burn Down the Malls," "I Hate Banks," "Destroy all Lawyers," "Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with my Two Headed Love Child," "Elvis is Everywhere," "Don Henley Must Die," and "Jesus at McDonalds." He was an imperfect encapsulation of the counter-cultural rage in that industrial wasteland, the musical equivalent of Texas Chainsaw Massacre .  Looking back through recordings of Mojo -- interviews and MTV ...

#WinterDriving #35ontheInterstate #LakeEffectSnow The night before my most recent infusion, we met with Cornelia and Jack at Sava's in Ann Arbor for dinner. There was some kind of sportsball game on the television that everyone seemed interested in, a post-Rose Bowl championship game happening. We left before the college-town fanatics streamed onto the streets of Ann Arbor and started setting everything on fire. Good thing they won. The session at the Rogel Cancer Center went without a hitch, though they were backed up in the infusion room and we had to wait a while for an open chair. We arrived at 11:30 am for lab work, then met with Dr. Q at 12:30 to go over the lab results -- all good reports in terms of kidney function, liver function, heart, and lungs. Dr. Q was upbeat about the response to Docetaxel and the mildness of the side effects which were much gentler than this past summer. We parked ourselves in the waiting room for the infusion bays by 1:00 or so for a 2:00 appointm...

Back in Chicago Erstwhile: after researching the University of Michigan's clinical trial for treating advanced Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer:  Ramucirumab Plus Pembrolizumab vs Usual Care for Treatment of Stage IV or Recurrent Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Following Immunotherapy, Pragmatica-Lung Study, I finally decided to sign up for the study and start treatment in Ann Arbor. I  cleared all their protocols and scheduled the first session for December 19th. I'll still check in with Dr. H from time to time in Reed city to keep that link open. In mid-December, Dr. Q called me to tell me I've been randomized into the control group. This means that a computer has decided that I should be in the group that receives the standard care for 2nd line treatment for metastatic lung cancer after an unsuccessful first line treatment of chemotherapy (carboplatin) plus immunotherapy (atezolizumab). At least it's not a placebo. The experimental group, as opposed to the control grou...

The short version  For those whose impulse is "too long; didn't read" but still want to be in the loop, this section should get you caught up. I emailed a version of this to family members, so some of you may already be familiar with this information. I've joined the clinical trial at the University of Michigan's Rogel Cancer Center. Pre-trial scans (CT and MRI) over the last couple weeks all look good: no new brain metastases and little disease progression with bone mets and other lesions, which was surprising to me.  Over the next couple weeks, I will be sorted into Group A (control group/standard of care chemotherapy with Docetaxel) or Group B (experimental group/immunotherapy with Keytruda).  I should know right away which group I'm sorted into. I'll start infusions every 21 days beginning on December 19th for up to 2 years, or until the drugs become hypertoxic or stop being effective. -------------- The long version It's been one year since the fi...

Giving Thanks, November 2023 In my last update a couple weeks ago, I wrote about needing to make a decision about next steps for second line therapy -- whether to go with the Pragmatica-Lung Clinical Trial, a prospective randomized study of Ramucirumab plus Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in a 3 hour IV infusion every 3 weeks for 2 years (or until it stops working or becomes hypertoxic) or to go with standard of care, which is Ramucirumab plus Docetaxel chemotherapy for two years or until hypertoxic. In messaging with our primary oncologist, Dr. H., we learned that if I start another round of chemotherapy, I will be disqualified from joining the clinical trial. In that case, it would make more sense to start with the Pembrolizumab trial first and then switch to Docetaxel later if that's not working. Of.course, if I end up in the control group, I'll be prescribed Docetaxel anyway. When pressed about whether to join the clinical trial at UM in Ann Arbor or one of the same trials at ...

MRI: Not quite sure what I'm looking at here, but I thought the eyeballs looked cool.  Teaching   There are only a few active weeks left in the semester, and my students in creative nonfiction have been incredible. They're a small group of very talented and self-motivated writers and have been gracious about my lapses. I've nearly caught up on scoring and commenting on their work, but there's also a lot of peer feedback and they are all quite skilled at that. Nearly all of the students are writing consultants in either the writing center or the embedded writing specialist program. We had a fantastic face-to-face session this last week with Curtis Chin , author of the new memoir Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant .  Curtis Chin. That's me in the (back left) corner. I'm thinking that this might be my last semester of teaching, and what a good class to go out on. I'm looking into extending my paid medical leave through May, taking summer of...

From the New York Times : "One of the great joys of the Jazz Fest is the odd parade that occasionally takes over the pedestrian paths, bursting through the center of the fairgrounds with an explosion of color, sun-brellas, horns, feathers, and fancy footwork. This apparently chaotic event is called a second line. "The second line is a type of parade historically associated with jazz funerals; the term "second line" is often thought originally to have referred to the secondary group of participants in such a parade, behind the band and the family . "Second line" is also used to refer to the distinctive dance moves that can be glimpsed during New Orleans street parades of all sorts." It’s clear that my treatment team is transitioning me from curative treatment to palliative care that attempts to arrest disease progression and provide a measure of comfort. I've reconnected with the palliative care team for pain management and to alleviate side effect...