I had a 7:00 a.m. meeting with two doctors in Vilnius, Lithuania, this morning. They politely teased me when I said “good morning” and they responded “good afternoon! We’ve been working all day!” They were also delighted when Wes came over & I told him that they were my doctors in Europe, and he said, “thank you for taking care of my Papa!” He just turned nine on Friday, which seems abjectly impossible. Such is parenting in the days of accelerated time (thanks a lot, Large Hadron Collider!).
Side note: did I just Google “big science machine in Switzerland”? I’ll never tell.
The reason for this morning’s meeting is that my CancerNeo next-gen genetic analysis is complete! They identified 24 growth factors for the tumor, only three of which were already known from prior genetic analysis. They said sometimes there are as few as one growth factor, and the more there are, the better.
In my Creative Writing Major understanding of the science, more growth factors means a more complex house of cards, a higher likelihood of immune response, and an overall better prognosis because complex houses fall more easily when one or more of the tumor support beams is removed. It’s Wednesday and I’m tired, I’m allowed to mildly mix metaphors.
Another good piece of news is that the samples they received contained 70% active tumor tissue. The samples were smaller than they usually require, but they usually see only about 20% active tumor tissue and 80% necrotic tissue. This means this second tumor was in fact caught very early and didn’t have a big ball of necrotic tissue in the middle of it. It also meant they didn’t have to go back to my first tumor and could use the most current version (not sure if it would be tumor 1.1 or tumor 2.0) for analysis and peptide construction.
Today they’ll send me paperwork to sign and an invoice, and I’ll send them some $70,000, and about 3 months later, I’ll make the first of 11 trips to Vilnius, Lithuania for the first of 14 vaccine administrations.
I can barely even think about the response to my GoFundMe without getting overwhelmed. The entire genetic analysis and manufacturing of peptide vaccines has been covered by GFM donations (and Venmos etc sent outside of GFM) and an incredible fundraiser spearheaded by (to my understanding) Dan Wagner and Beth Kligerman and assisted by many other wonderful people, most of whom I know through Second City, and many of whom I hadn’t seen for a decade or more.
It was one of those events that only lasted 2 hours but needed to be a week-long retreat to properly catch up with everyone. So I improperly caught up with a lot of folks, and some people I saw there I didn’t even have time to catch up with/thank/hug/practice handshaking on.
Allen Epley was kind enough to play a couple of sets, sprinkling TLAT and solo songs in with a beautiful new one built on a bed of vocal loops.
School started for the kiddos–Ike in kindergarten and Wes in 3rd grade (wtfLHC)–and I’m still a devotee of the em dash even if it makes people think AI wrote this.
At the risk of “announcing your plans is broadcasting your failures”, I’ll try to make the updates a little more frequent. Still having trouble dialing in the sleep since starting to wear Optune 24/7.
9/16/26
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