The roller coaster of life: A week of fundraising highs and ovarian cancer lows

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You know, it seems that no sooner do my hopes get raised that they get dashed once again. I need to stop planning for the future because it is clearly presumptuous.

The last week has been very frantic because aWEARness was this past Sunday. We were very busy getting everything ready for the event and it was great. We passed the $500,000 mark in the three years of running this event, which I think is a fantastic milestone. Thanks to everyone for their support. This was a definite high.

During the week, I screwed up and missed my CT scan because I didn't take the meds I need to prevent an allergic reaction to the contrast dye. So, I went to my doctor's appointment but there wasn't much we could do because without the results, we can't figure out what to do next. This was neutral.

Following my doctor's appointment, I finalized many aspects of the fundraising dinner I'm chairing for my daughter's school on May 26th. The invitations are all out, tickets are being purchased, discussions with the entertainers and service providers are all positive. Things are coming together. Another high.

Then a double whammy. Two definite lows. The first has to do with my house. Mark and I are in litigation because we have all sorts of problems with our house. We had some inspections done to the house this week and were told that the fix would be at least six figures, multiple times. Argh! Then, the next day, I am told that my CA-125 tumour marker level is rising again. Big, big, big low.

It seems that the clinical trial worked for a short while, but the likelihood is that it has stopped being effective. It would appear from the bloodwork that the cancer is growing again and has found a way to work around the trial drug. F@$!! (Am  I allowed to swear on this blog?!) I know the doctors want to see the CT-scan results before they will say anything, but my CA-125 has always been a pretty reliable indicator of what is going on and it is higher than it ever has been. F!@#!

As I was driving after I got the results I had two thoughts: this drug gave me the time to do these two events that I otherwise wouldn't have had, and I may actually die from this disease sooner rather than later. Okay. I know that is morbid, but I couldn't help it. The thought came. I quickly banished it, but it was there for a while. I tried to focus on the first thought, but it is hard to avoid the negative.

I am going to focus on the fact that I got another quiet six months from this clinical trial that I may not otherwise have had. I was relatively healthy through this period with minimal side effects. I got to do aWEARness and I got to see this school event through to its conclusion. I will now meet with my doctor on Monday to get the official results from the CT scan, and then we can decide what we are going to do moving forward. There are still lots of options, but the thought that a few pills a day could keep this disease at bay was really quite a high. The reality...the roller coaster has come back down.