I could have sworn I posted last week, but as I look back I can see that I didn't.  Maybe I just thought a post (or several posts) and never actually typed them.  Dr. Drosick expressed his satisfaction with Cathy's tumor response again.  He predicted a successful surgery and gave his blessing for that to occur any time after 3 weeks has passed.  Cathy's neuropathy concerned him enough and he felt good enough about her tumor response that he reduced her taxotere dosage by 50% this time around.  We asked if that was what was causing the neuropathy.  His response was, "Who knows?"  We've appreciated his honesty about the mysteries of chemotherapy and his forthrightness about his take on the current research.  It's too bad Cathy started chemo before all the news reports about the genome sequencing and the linking of triple negative cancer to basal cell types.  It would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on the use of chemo drugs used for ovarian cancer used for TNBC instead of the more toxic anthracyclines that Cathy received.  I'll have to keep up with those aspects of the research to see how all of that develops in the future.  Maybe it means another avenue of chemo treatments for TNBC relapse victims when it was previously thought that a relapse was nearly indefensible?  I suppose only time will tell.

While we'll never really know if it was the taxotere that caused the neuropathy, we can guess that it was one of the drugs that made her feel more terrible - maybe even more than the others.  This time around, Cathy was down and out on Tuesday night and all day Wednesday, like usual.  On Thursday, though, she was up and about for several hours and ate at least two meals in addition to various snacks.  This is not typical!  Friday she was awake almost all day and she had almost a normal weekend, with a little fatigue, but a normal appetite.  Neuropathy is still a problem.  Maybe that means taxotere wasn't the culprit, but it still might have been.  Certainly she felt better sooner with a reduced taxotere dose, though.  Duh!  Less poison, less misery.

Cathy has an appointment with Dr. Manders on Wednesday.  At this appointment we will outline and schedule the biopsy and surgery.  It will be nice to have some set dates so that we can anticipate what the months of November and December might look like.  Cathy and I are planning a dinner date after that appointment.  We will celebrate the end of chemo and her birthday all at once!