Mets Day 1142: Eighth Opdivo infusion

I returned home from Utah late on Tuesday (actually early Wednesday morning) so I could get my eighth round of nivolumab. There are no clinical trial locations for my trial in Utah or anywhere else within a thousand miles, and even if there was, it is apparently almost impossible to drop in at another location and get the experimental drug. So yesterday I went in for lab work, and this morning Jennifer and I braved the Washington beltway and I 95 to Baltimore, despite the conspiracy of the traffic gods to slow our way (semi overturned on the inner loop; two accidents between DC and Charm City, etc.).

I discussed with Dr. Hahn the fact that none of the abstracts for this week's ASCO meeting (the American Society for Clinical Oncologists, starting tomorrow in Chicago) discussed nivolumab and metastatic bladder cancer. Nivolumab was discussed in relation to other cancers in 74 other papers, however, as was other immunotherapy agents, such as MPDL3280A. Dr. Hahn was familiar with the literature, as he was on an ASCO panel that would summarize the most recent science regarding immunotherapy as a weapon against cancer. He said that he would have several discussions with his colleagues and representatives from Bristol-Myers Squibb about nivolumab and mets BC, and would bring back any news regarding durability.

I also asked Dr. Hahn about the confounding disparity between the different interpretations of my CT scans.  He said that he had personally measured my tumors in my last scan, and had compared them to the prior scans. He said that his measurements were in between the dimensions recorded by the radiologists.  He shrugged it off, noting that variations of a few millimeters were not a big deal. The main thing, he said, was that every one agreed that my tumors were substantially smaller than they were in the prior scans.

He asked if I had noticed any side effects.  Other than the left side of my neck being a little sore (which probably is from a bad night's sleep), there continues to be nothing of note. All of my labs were good - the nurse helping with my infusion said that they were better than his.  While I was getting my infusion, a massage therapist came by and offered a neck and shoulder massage, which Jennifer happily accepted. The massage therapist explained that a grateful family had wanted to create a way to help ease the stress in the chemo infusion area, and worked with Johns Hopkins to fund a roving masseuse.

After I was infused with my meds, Jennifer dropped me off at BWI so I could fly back to Utah and spend more time with my newest granddaughter, as well as Rose, Josh, and Chelsea. I'll be there through June 9, then will return home for round nine. Kirsten will fly to Utah after I leave, and she will be followed by Jennifer. I guess I can't keep Lily all to myself.

While in Utah, I made a couple of visits to the LDS Family History Library, to see if I could break through some barriers in researching the genealogy of my father's ancestors. He had been orphaned at a young age, and had relatively little information about his parents or their families.  I met with success, and was able to trace my dad's line back for several generations. I was able to document that my paternal grandfather was married four times (at ages 21, 25, 28, and 43, the last being to my grandmother). So far, I have not uncovered evidence that he sired any other children. He died in 1935, at age 50.

My paternal great-grandfather, by contrast, was a prominent citizen of Vancouver, British Columbia, being a barrister, member of the provincial assembly (including a stint as speaker), built the first Vancouver skyscraper in 1915, and has a mountain and glacier named after him.  While he was serving in the legislature and rallying his fellow citizens during Great War, his oldest son (my grandfather) renounced his Canadian citizenship and was naturalized a US citizen.

My paternal grandmother had one son by her first husband, in 1918.  She and my grandfather married in 1927, and my father was born in 1930.  He was her second child. She died when he was eight. Her father was a civil engineer, born in Prussia in 1847, emigrated to the US in the 1880s, and married my great-grandmother in Colorado in 1889. My grandmother was born in 1891. Her mother was born in Bath, England, in 1860, the oldest child of a fishmonger and merchant. My great-grandfather's family had sufficient means to employ a couple of servants around the turn of the century, and take several trips back to England. At times, my great-grandfather prefixed his surname with "von", the Prussian appellation of nobility, although I can find no basis for that assertion.

These all are facts that I have teased out of documents I've discovered in the past couple of weeks. To look at documents more than a hundred years old - census records, passenger manifests, oaths of marriage and citizenship - and glean the dry bones of those long dead. What stories must be behind those records! The wrenching decision to leave their home countries and come to America, the desire to cleave from the past, to reinvent oneself: I am descended of recent immigrants, seekers of fortune, a better life.