Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
At all times except when I ran away.
“All done,” the nurse cheerfully announces and hurries out of the room, leaving us alone.
On impulse, I extend my hand to Alexei. When he takes it, I wrap my fingers around his palm and say, “You should go and get some rest. You look tired.”
A shadow of a smile touches his lips as he perches on the edge of my bed and brings my hand to his mouth to brush another kiss over my knuckles. “It’s sweet of you to worry about me, Alinyonok, but I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” I say. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
He chuckles. “That sounds about right.” Gently, he places my hand on the bed and says, “How about we make a deal? You sleep, and I’ll sleep.”
Here, he means. By my side.
I sigh and close my eyes, not wanting to dwell on what it all means.
Not wanting to question if I’ve been wrong about him this whole time.
I’m woken up twice more during the night by nurses checking on me, and each time, Alexei is there. Finally, it’s morning, and Fasseu comes in, a printout in his hands.
Without preliminaries, he announces, “We have the pathology results.”
My heart leaps into my throat, and Alexei, who’s sitting on my bed, visibly tenses.
“As my colleague, Dr. Kressler, suspected, it’s a high-grade oligodendroglioma,” the doctor continues. “However, there is some good news as well. The tumor has a characteristic that makes it more susceptible to radiation and chemotherapy—specifically, the codeletion of 1p/19q—which, combined with the frontal lobe location and your age, leads us to believe that a favorable outcome is more likely than not.”
“So… better than a fifty-percent five-year survival rate?” I ask cautiously. Because that would be amazing. That would be—
“Maybe as high as eighty percent,” the doctor says and smiles. “There’s also an immunotherapy trial I’d like to enroll you into. We can do it in conjunction with the chemotherapy protocol, or prior to it—depending on your risk tolerance.”
“Tell us more,” Alexei orders, and the doctor launches into the explanation of the immunotherapy in question and how it harnesses the patient’s own killer cells to fight the cancer. He goes over all the risks, many of them having to do with autoimmune reactions, and then he launches into the radiation protocol that I’d need to undergo regardless of whether I opt in for the trial or not. “It will be for six weeks, starting as soon as possible,” he tells us.
I do my best to listen attentively and take it all in, but there’s one question I can’t stop dwelling on that the doctor isn’t addressing. “What about freezing my eggs?” I ask as he pauses for breath. “Where does that fit in?”
The doctor glances warily at Alexei, who’s watching him with narrowed eyes, before refocusing on me. “That is something for you two to discuss with a fertility specialist. We have achieved close to a complete resection—that is, the removal of all visible and detectable parts of the tumor—during the surgery, but some cancer cells inevitably remain, so there is always a risk to delaying the start of radiation therapy. However, given your age and the other favorable factors we discussed, it’s not a big risk, and you have to decide how important the ability to have biological children is to you. Something to keep in mind is that the radiation therapy we’ll be using is highly targeted and localized, so there will be no direct impact on your reproductive organs. There could, however, be an indirect impact on your fertility through changes in hormonal levels, as we may have to target areas near the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus.”
“What about the immunotherapy?” Alexei asks, his dark eyes focused intently on the doctor.
“Since this specific drug is still in the clinical trial stages, we don’t have a lot of data on how it impacts reproductive health. However, other immunotherapy drugs have been shown not to have a significant impact on reproductive organs, and we expect to see the same results here.” The doctor pauses before adding, “Of course, if the immunotherapy is used in conjunction with the chemotherapy protocol, your fertility will almost certainly be affected. So it’s really up to you and your risk tolerance…”
My head is beginning to ache again from all this doctor speak. I want straightforward answers about the path forward, not all this “your risk tolerance” hedging.
Alexei must feel the same because his tone sharpens as he asks, “So what do you recommend? Chemotherapy in conjunction with the immunotherapy and radiation? Or just immunotherapy and radiation?”
Fasseau takes in a breath. “Like I said, it really depends on—”
Alexei raises his hand, palm out, cutting him off. His tone sharpens further. “If this were your wife or daughter, what would you do for her?”