Back in the Infusion Chair

After recently experiencing bone-only progression on scans and perhaps some developing liver mets again based on results of ctDNA testing too small to be seen on imaging, I had to choose a new line of treatment and the daunting challenge revealed how few options I have left. Yes, the medical oncologists still try to give hope by telling me how many options there are approved as standard of care left for me, all the medications that may be approved soon or in the future, but getting them to list the actual real options reveals the truth — there aren’t that many good options left likely to be effective for very long and nearly everything available right now will require me to be tied to the infusion chair. Plus, I’m solidly in the category of “heavily pre-treated,” and the recent Stage I melanoma diagnosis in 2025 makes me ineligible for many clinical trials.

No one says this directly, but I am fully, painfully aware that the specter of death is just a little bit closer. For those of us living with Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) who don’t have an amazing response to any one treatment, the way we stay alive is to string treatment after treatment after treatment one after the other. It’s not usually possible to circle back to repeat a treatment when progression has occurred, so once the list is exhausted, hospice is the last option.

Doom and gloom? Maybe. But it’s hard not to feel the shadow when you know that each time you “spend” an option, it is gone for good.

After weighing all of the factors and making my rounds to all of my consulting doctors, I chose to do Taxol, three weeks on and one week off to start. I’m using both compression and ice packs on my hands and feet to hopefully avoid peripheral neuropathy (recent results of the POLAR study showing compression and icing are helpful: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/2830876#google_vignette). The actual time in the infusion chair has been pretty closet to two (2) hours each time, which is substantially better than previous infusion lines and my new infusion center has been so very efficient both times and it’s much closer to my house, so I’m thankful that I made the change, even if it was a pretty complicated time to do so.

I’m still the youngest person in the infusion center by quite a bit and I get some looks when I arrive with all my bags and accessories — here’s a picture my mom took at the last appointment:

That’s the mechanics. The facts.

The rest of it is harder to hold in tidy language.

I am grieving. And I am angry. Angry that TruQap didn’t hold longer, that the small, precious break from the infusion chair slipped through my fingers so quickly. Angry that my days are once again carved up by appointments and bloodwork and hours that cannot be reclaimed. Angry that I will likely begin to look, again, like a stereotypical cancer patient.

There is a cost to all of this, and it is not just mine. The time, the logistics, the rearranging of life—it ripples outward. It lands on my family, on the people who love me, in ways I can see and in ways I can’t.

And vulnerability—this constant needing—is not a language that comes easily to me.

Yes, I can name the gratitude. It is real. I am grateful for options, even as they dwindle, knowing too many are told they have none. Grateful for what is coming down the pipeline, for the plans I have laid, contingency upon contingency. Grateful for my family, for friends who stand close and far but never absent. Grateful for the resources that allow me to keep showing up, to keep fighting in the ways available to me.

And yet.

I hold the anger in the same hand.

Anger at this fresh iteration of loss. At the relentless reminders of what terminal means. At the way time is taken, reshaped, no longer fully mine. I accept the help, even as I grieve the necessity of it. I watch my boys, my husband, my parents—how they watch me now, more closely, more carefully—and I carry that too.

I will show up. I will do what needs to be done. I will manage the side effects I expect, and learn the ones I don’t. I will keep going.

I always do. We always do.

But some days, the truest thing I can say is this:

It just… sucks.