News from Auburn Fri Dec 26, 2008
In this
issue:
Health
update
Other news
Quotables
Health
update
Still no news from the drug
company on letting me into their study. Dr. Forero thinks the
response may take as long as a
week.
This week has been extremely
difficult for me physically; I won't go into symptoms, it's just been very
tough. Viva's had to help me wash and dress, I usually lack the strength
to walk to the kitchen for meals (even with O2), and there's plenty of things
going on to say that the tumor and the ulcers are still active.
Ick.
I emailed a summary of the
situation to Dr. Forero's team at UAB this morning, and he quickly contacted me
and Dr. Graves (my original oncologist here in town) to set up an interim
treatment plan with a recently approved drug for lymphoma. Treatment
should start early next week. (Further discussion under "Quotables"
below.) So, I have a new set of possible
outcomes:
(1) The interim treatment
fails. Back to end game.
(2) The
interim treatment keeps me going long enough to start a study (back to options
1-5 from last week).
(3) The interim
treatment wipes every trace of cancer from my body.
Woo-hoo!
We'll see what
happens.
Other
news
I've had several visitors this week.
I intended to keep the visits short but I get so few that I can't help it,
we talked for at least an hour, sometimes two. Wipes me out! (Which
is why I had to ask some people not to come over.) But I enjoy the
conversation. Then I go to sleep or get sick, depending on how the day
went up to that point (fever or
not).
Christmas was very nice at our
house. Adam (I think without knowing it) took up two traditions from my
family when I was growing up:
- He bought
himself a gift that he liked and the put someone else's name on the "From"
line.
- He bought lots of other gifts
for other people and often put someone else's name on
them.
Quotables
Because
of how difficult things were this week, I began to think that I am
approaching "end game" with this tumor. I told Kayla about the phone call
from UAB today - that an interim treatment is being planned - and how I thought
that without treatment we were approaching "end game" with perhaps 2-3 weeks
left. She shot her fist in the air and said, "Yes! Mushroom power
up!" [The Nintendo challenged will have no clue what that means and
I am not going to explain.]
I hope you
all had as pleasant a Christmas as I did. In fact, we liked it so much
that we're having family come over the next couple of weeks so we can do
Christmas 2 or 3 times.
:-)
That's all I can think of
this week, so I'l quit here. Lord willing, I'll write again next
week!
Posted: Fri - December 26, 2008 at 04:57 PM
|
|
