We hoped for a boring few weeks, but we immediately got the opposite. Cathy had a check-up and clearance visit for her CAR T therapy on Monday. The doctor was concerned that it seemed the cancer had resumed its stubborn march, and was particularly mindful of some kidney-function related blood markers that appeared to be on the rise. This could signal the lymphoma is starting to impede the kidneys. And while there are two of them, as Mom always told Lindsay and I, “You’re both important.”

On the bright side, the lab confirmed that the engineering of her T-Cells went perfectly and they’re currently in deep freeze, available for when the time is right. This is important because it buys more options: namely an additional drug can be used that was previously taken off the table because of its ability to harm healthy T-Cells. This would be a problem should the T-Cell harvesting have to happen again. But since we can cross that concern off the list, and since the CAR T therapy is most effective with smaller amounts of disease, Cathy was re-admitted to the hospital on Monday after her appointment to get another round of treatment, but with this new drug that her body has never seen before (which provides hope that it will be effective).

She received an infusion Monday and Tuesday evenings and even hosted “a drip party” with the nurses who administered the treatment while watching the Olympics together. Luckily, the drug seems to be doing something, as her kidney counts and other markers are coming back down which is reassuring. She was released this afternoon and is now resting comfortably at home, in good spirits, and tolerating the drug nicely so far. Its effects peak five days post infusion so she’ll likely see a dip in her blood counts and energy this weekend.

This effectively pushes back her CAR-T treatment by about 3 weeks – until her blood counts rebound – so we’re looking at around the last week of August should everything hold. While it may seem like discouraging news, the doctor and his team have assured us that CAR T therapy can theoretically be done at any time, but time is on our side at the moment, and it’s best to try further options for getting the disease burden down as low as possible before pulling out the big guns.