Hooked up to the infernal machine
not the one used in the attempted assassination of Louis Philippe I
I don’t have much to say about myself in this post, except that since I last updated you all on the treatment plan, the plan changed again. The latest PET scan revealed that the second chemo regimen was almost entirely ineffective—in that it didn’t shrink the tumour on my pancreas at all. Some sites (various lymph nodes) that lit up previously are now dark, however. That’s the good news.
So instead of stem cell transplantation, we’re pivoting to CAR T-cell therapy. My t-cells are being harvested today to be sent off to a lab in sunny California to be reprogrammed to attack the lymphoma. It’s really quite something. So I’ll be hooked up to this machine today that removes the t-cells from my blood and then returns my (warmed up) blood to me, bringing me back to the days in seminary when I sold my plasma for cold, hard cash.
So that’s my whole day today. It doesn’t feel like anything’s happening, but I can see the activity in the lines going to and fro the new port that’s been installed in my chest near my collarbone.
The nurse that’s assigned to me today said something very lovely when I lamented that we were now on “plan C”, something not dissimilar to my own bouts of hope in all this: at least there is a plan, and we’re going to do the best we can with this plan regardless of the failure of plans A and B.
Tomorrow I’ll be in the radiation oncology clinic as we prep for bridging therapy. Since the cancer is now entirely localized in this tumour, the various docs think zapping it a few (ten) times between now and when I receive my supercharged t-cells should help 1) shrink the tumour more, and 2) (based on studies that are newer than my own child) help the t-cells do more work on the tumour. I was trying to figure out a good analogy for this, and my friend Cindy came up with a perfect one: it’s like sanding a piece of wood to make sure the stain/paint sticks better.
The other thing I wanted to say today, and perhaps more to ask you all to think/pray about, is an acquaintance of mine: Greg Hillis.
I first became acquainted with Greg through Twitter while I was still living in Kentucky, at the tail end of my MA. At that time Greg was teaching at Bellarmine University in Louisville. Earlier in his career he had mostly been focused on Cyril of Alexandria, so our patristic interests overlapped—but he also tweeted a great deal about baseball, so that also held my attention. Lately he’s written a great deal about Thomas Merton.
As my Twitter usage waned over the years, I fell out of touch with him. But we recently reconnected—and he is now the director of the Aquinas Centre at Emory—when I read about his own cancer journey that started at the same time as mine. Unfortunately, his treatment has been even more of a roller coaster. Cholangiocarcinoma is not a welcome diagnosis. And while the latest treatment seemed to be yielding positive results to stretch his prognosis, a recent scan revealed that this was indeed not the case.
I want to encourage you to do two things:
Read his own reflection on cancer in dialogue with Julian of Norwich. It’s beautiful and better than anything I’ve ever written. Greg is a devout Catholic, so it’s a slightly different angle than mine, but I truly hope you’ll receive it as a gift.
Visit his GoFundMe. Despite being Canadian, Greg and his family are reliant on an American system of treatment that is incredibly expensive. I’m putting this here to cast the net widely. I never know who is going to read this, but perhaps some of you who care deeply about me will be moved by the story of someone who has moved me deeply.
That’s all from me for now. More next week.