Sheila Ghosh

The biggest news is of course, the birth of my niece, Sasha Remi Westwood Ghosh, Nancy’s little bundle of joy. Two weeks later, Nancy went into (hard) labor and gave birth to her daughter, Sasha Remi. Nancy was quite bruised and very tired, but did a great job in the weeks and months after to take care of little Sasha, helped by our mom, who is a great support in times of need. The MRI scans I had in May showed 3 different small tumors in my right breast, about 6 mm in diameter, together about 2,3 cm.

Depending on the results, I will either get radiation treatment – if there are no indications of new metastases – or systemic treatment (meaning chemo), if there are mets. Yesterday we celebrated King’s day, which was memorable for being so cold (low 40’s). King’s day is an outdoor event; we went to hear some live music in the village and had a beer (just one). It was nice to catch a few stray rays of sun, but once the sun set we went back home.

This is partly due to Victor’s new occupation of privacy guru but also because I have had a tough year. I have my yearly scans in April and last year the scans showed a new tumor in the liver, about 23 mm big. Since the other tumor (3 cm) had shrunk to 26 mm, the radiologist concluded that the cancer was still stable. We had a lovely time, even ate vegetarian one night and had a good trip back.

I have an inner ear infection which should heal on its own (says my GP) but it still causes pain and makes me deaf in one ear. and so we talked about the industry and how difficult it has become for her to enroll patients in studies because of all the requirements the pharmaceutical companies impose, probably to avoid lawsuits or issues with the results. She works with international researchers on cancer studies and has a lot of experience in this area. I’m doing some consulting work in health care policy, focusing on IT.