Happy Birthday Mama!

September 22nd, 2011

September 22, 2011

Dear friends,

September is my favorite month. Hot summer is coming to an end. It’s a beginning of a beautiful new season when nature is getting ready to have some rest. It’s time of transitioning from summer’s active state to a calmer fall existence.  Back home in Siberia, it is time for harvesting the crops and preparing supplies for winter: jams, pickles, honey, potatoes...

Both my parents were born in September.  Mom’s Birthday is exactly today, on September 22.

It has been slightly more than a year since the beginning of our battle with cancer. On September 16th one year ago we arrived in Los Angeles from Moscow and since that time every minute and every second of our lives have been a war with this silent and deadly enemy. With ups and downs of the treatment we have lived through excruciating moments of hopelessness and darkness, when the whole world seemed to shrink to a size of a hospital exam room. We have also experiences moment of pure bliss and happiness when mom’s doctor had some good news. Well, by good news I often mean exam results showing that the cancer has not spread anywhere else. It might not be exactly an outstanding example of “good news” but to us it means that we can continue fighting. One treatment at a time, one day at a time, step by step…

Mom’s most recent CT-scan was two weeks ago. The results could have been better. Most of the cancer nodules have stabilizes except of one lesion in her liver that seemed slightly enlarged. In a hope to stop cancer from spreading any further, our oncologist made a decision to increase the dosage of chemo drugs by 10%. It does not seem like a lot, but considering the severity of the side effects and cumulative toxic residuals in mom’s body, this is a large increase in dosage. Mom had her 17th chemo (since October 2010) last week and is recovering from it now. The next treatment is scheduled for October 3d. Treatments take place every three weeks.

Today is all about life. I am running out of words to describe what I feel and how unreal this seems after everything we’ve been through over the past year. I can only express my deepest gratitude to all of you for supporting us and for being a strong moral pillar in this battle. The fact that mom is alive today and is ready to fight for her life is your achievement as much as it’s hers. I am thankful to mom’s doctors who keep monitoring her condition and adjusting the treatment to maximize the positive results. I am grateful to mom who is indeed the strongest and most optimistic person I’ve ever known. And I am thankful to God and the Universe for the most precious gift of life.

To Mom! To Life! To many more years ahead!

Love,

Katya

Summer time, part I

July 24th, 2011

May 31, 2011

Dear Friends,

Mom had her 14th chemo therapy last week and is slowly recovering now from the treatment. She is weak immediately after the treatment but as time goes by she regains some of her strength and it able to live a somewhat normal life. That is what they call “quality of life”. Those few days when she feels better in between the treatment are precious and we try to load them with events to create memories. Having a normal life with such a condition is almost impossible but we are trying hard to get as close to it as we can given the circumstances…

One of the things mom had always enjoyed doing was hosting people. From my childhood in Siberia, to our life in Moscow I always remember mom having guests in our house. And even here, in California, there are people who visit mom from Russia. Some of them stay for a few minutes or hours, other stay longer:  our cousin Elena from Moscow stayed here for three weeks. Words can poorly describe the effect those visits have on mom: she truly enjoys being with people, talking to them, and feeling and experiencing life through their impressions and emotions.

Mom also likes staying in touch with people via email. She has a few friends that she exchanges emails with practically daily. It’s quite a challenge to write something daily, especially if nothing “extraordinary” happens. But mom has a talent to find interest even in the most mundane and ordinary day. She can describe in full colors things that you would not consider exciting. She can write about a simple walk, or shopping, or reading a book, or simply enjoying the sunset and make is sound so appealing and interesting that you can’t help but imagine it in full colors. Mom does have a talent for writing.

She writes a lot these days. Her writing is mostly descriptive about our life in California and our fight with cancer. She writes in a simple sincere manner that is honest, revealing and open and can hardly leave anyone indifferent. She could make one great writer.

Her medical condition remains stable but no major progress has been made in beating cancer. The cancer did not grow but did not retreat much, so it stays the same…Chemo is able to keep tumors where they are but it seems that this cancer is very resistant. Our doctor is reluctant to try a more aggressive treatment since mom’s body is weakened by continuous treatment and can be severely damaged by a more aggressive regimen. So we leave things as they are and we hope that the next few weeks will brings us more good news…

Our fight goes on. It has been almost a year since August 8, 2010 when mom was hospitalized for an emergency surgery back in Moscow. Life has not been the same since that day and it is unlikely that it will ever be the same again. Living with cancer is our new reality that we have accepted and that you all help us go through by thinking about us, by encouraging and supporting us. Thank you.

With love,

Katya

June 1, 2011 - Against the odds

June 1st, 2011

Interpreting cancer statistics 

Dear Friends,

There are a few things I would like to share with you. The first and the most amazing one is that mom is doing really well for her condition.  I say it very cautiously as you can imagine her health is extremely fragile and cancer is an unpredictable monster.  But at least the most recent CT-scan we did six weeks ago showed that the tumors decreased in size and there is no visible advancement of the metastasis. This Friday, on June 3, mom’s doctor ordered another CT-scan that we hope will confirm the positive trend in her treatment.  Stage IV remission, which is the state of a cancer patient where there is no visible cancer that can be seen during the CT-scan or under the microscope, is a very rare thing. According to the statistics, less than 7% of all colon cancer patients at stage IV will reach remission.  Will mom become a part of this lucky 7%?

What does 7% mean?  If somebody told me for example that I have a 7% chance to win a California Lottery (the odds to win it in reality are less than the odds to be hit twice by a lightening), I probably would give it a try.  In case I lose, it would not be a big deal however - 7% never sounded too convincing but just enough to keep me curious and to motivate me to get that lotto ticket. Or what if I knew that a plane from LAX to Moscow I was about to board had a 7% chance of crashing somewhere above the northern Atlantic? Hell no, I would never take that plane.  7% of a certainty to die in the next few hours is enough to turn me off of my travel plans.

But how does a 7% chance sound regarding the person I care about the most in this universe.  What does 7% mean about her being able to gain her health and not die in the months ahead, but live five, ten, or maybe even more years?  How about a 7% chance that my mother would actually be able to see my kids and teach them Russian, or to see her friends in Russia again, or to write and publish a book like she has always wanted to?  Is it a good chance?  Is it a bad chance?  How can I even sit here in the middle of the night trying to rationalize my mom’s chances?  Sometimes I think I am going crazy from everything that is happening in our lives.

Living with death standing so close and still being able to hope and live is a difficult combination of emotions that can test your sanity.  We usually don’t think about death in our daily life.  Yes, of course, we all know that we all will die.  But is it not like we wake up every morning and are surprised that we are still alive…most of us live with the assumption that there is another day.  Well, I can tell you one thing: with time the thought of death becomes mundane, because you think of it every day, death becomes the assumption instead; you don’t even notice it.  And that is when you accept death and you let thoughts about death capture your heart, to fill your mind and your soul with a cold dark fear, and then you let that thought have its own life….that is when you stop focusing on death and can concentrate your thoughts and all your energy on life.  Accepting, admitting, and doing the right thing is the key to being able to survive the turmoil and devastating burden of the unpredictable future.

By accepting the worst and letting your mind to go through your scariest thoughts over and over again, to play with your imagination, to survive through your ugliest nightmares and hopeless nights of insomnia, and then to wake up the next morning and to feel and realize the life that you still have regardless of your deepest and darkest fears – that is the way to get stronger.  And only when you are strong and when you can focus 100% on life, not death, that is when 7% means the world to you.  Even for a hope that mom will be among those 7% of colon cancer patients who will enter into remission, I am ready to do everything possible…and everything impossible also.

Without you, without your support, thoughts and prayers, our battle would have an even worse chance.  American medicine that gives us hope now is expensive beyond any human imagination.  We would have never been able to continue mom’s treatment at Cedars-Sinai without your contributions.  And that is simply the truth of our life.  So this is it, you HELP us to receive treatment and therefore you HELP mom live. What can I as my mom’s daughter do to express my gratitude to YOU?  All of the words do not seem powerful enough for this purpose.  Just one more time, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart, from my very soul, thank you for being in our life, thank you for not being indifferent, thank you for prayers, thank you for your words and your thoughts, for your energy. 

The other thing is that HelpOlga site can no longer be available for donations.  You can contribute to mom’s continuing treatment that is far from being over, at the new site, HelpOlga2 (http://www.giveforward.com/helpolga2).  Our battle goes on, our hope gets stronger, and regardless of the statistics, I know we are going to make it!

With Love,

Katya