Another breakup, another blind date

Screen cap from Music and Muffins' video for Kate Nash's
"Nicest Thing." Now there's a beautiful broken-heart song for you.

On Thursday I had an ultrasound of just my liver to see how the tumors there are doing (turns out I was right when I said it seemed like the liver had moved to the front of the focus line.  With the liver stuff going on, those poor bone mets can't even get the time of day anymore).  

Yesterday my oncologist called to tell me that the ultrasound showed that there's some more measurable growth in at least one of the bigger tumors in my liver.  Fortunately, my blood tests show my liver function is still normal so it's not an immediate danger.  But it is a move in the wrong direction.

So that's the end of Ibrance for me.

As of yesterday, I am no longer taking those Ibrace pills I fought so hard to wring out of my insurances and specialty pharmacies.  I still have roughly $7000 of that stuff left over (which is only about 2 weeks worth, which is pretty crazy, isn't it?) plus a cool Ibrance pill case, but I'm going to have to toss them.  With Ibrance, I'm done.

Instead, in 2 weeks I will begin a different drug called Afinitor.  

As I was writing an email about the whole situation, it became pretty clear that if I just replaced "Ibrance" and "Afinitor" with a couple of guy names, it would sound exactly like I was writing about relationships.

Almost 2 decades after I found my real life love and settled down, I'm about to go on a blind date with Afinitor just 2 weeks after a bad break-up with Ibrance.  Roughly 6 months after being dumped by Faslodex.  And a year and a half after I had to give Tamoxifen the boot. Honestly, I really didn't enjoy dating when I was dating, way too much stress and unpredictability for me.  And still, here I am.

Ibrance seemed promising back in April.  On paper it was a good match: me with ER+ HER2- metastatic breast cancer, Ibrance: dashing around taking the breast cancer world by storm with brand new "breakthrough drug" status and a reputation for being kind. 

At first it was the little things.  A bad cold, some scary white blood cells.  We tried taking a break, dialing down the dose.  Things seemed better but it was getting hard to ignore the bad omens.  More growth in my liver, tumor markers staying about the same but never going further down (seemed ok at the time but in hindsight...).  I kept trying, telling myself maybe things weren't that bad, maybe they'd get better with just a bit more time. But things never got better.  It just had to end.

At least, as they say, there are other fish in the sea, and one of them is named Afinitor.

My oncologist has had patients do very well on Afinitor.  Some women online have, too.  There's lots of reason to be hopeful.  

So, as people do all over the world wherever there are people who date, I'm listening to a few sad songs, lying to myself I never liked Ibrance anyway, replaying things in my head trying to figure out what went wrong,and then, ready or not, I'll picking myself up, brushing off past failures, suspending my disbelief, and starting all over again with something new.

This is me, giving Afinitor half a chance to prove that even after everything that's come before, maybe, just maybe, this next one will be just the one I've been looking for.

What do you say, Afinitor, shall we give this thing a shot?