April Fools’ Times Two

Unhappy anniversary: No joke, alas

Photo by Planet Volumes on Unsplash

Last year, I posted about the saga of my friend Cheryl, who was in the throes of a brutal course of chemotherapy for stage three breast cancer.

In the wake of that torturous regime, Cheryl endured two lumpectomies, followed by a month of radiation, which overlapped with targeted infusion therapy.

The good

Cheryl thus far remains cancer-free. Her hair has rebounded gloriously; she’s sporting a lustrous mane of “chemo curls.” She looks fabulous!

The bad

Cheryl is experiencing increasing joint pain, an unavoidable side effect of the (minimum) five-years’ worth of daily doses of estrogen blockers (which reduce the odds of recurrence from 60 percent to 30 percent).

Estrogen blockers effectively induce menopause — or, in Cheryl’s case, compounds her natural one of two years' prior — which leads to inexorable bone loss.

Cheryl has irremediable neuropathy in both hands and feet, which is cumulatively consequential to the insidious poisons that had ravaged her body.

The maddening sensations in her extremities alternate between numbness and burning. She persists in walking several miles daily, notwithstanding that she feels as if she’s treading…