Twenty-seven

No more chemo!

I never thought I'd say this, but for now that's actually a bad thing. The scans I had a few days ago revealed that all my spots are active and most have grown, so the chemo has stopped being effective.

Where do I go from here? We'll still be keeping an eye out for experimental chemos, and if I qualify for the studies. I don't know what my decision would be if we find one - very tired of and beat up from side effects vs. the minute chance it might help me. Or that it could help someone else down the road when the studies are over. I'll fall off that bridge when I come to it.

I'm alright for now - bummed, certainly, because it's a definite downer when you hear bad news that you knew already, but it sucks to finally hear it out loud. I should actually improve a little bit in the next couple weeks, in terms of fatigue and energy, now that the chemo's not berserking my blood on a weekly basis. Everybody's still taking good care of me, even though I can make my own PBnJ's, thankyouverymuch. I feel like a 3-year-old sometimes, "I can do it myself!" but I appreciate more than you can ever know, the care and concern I receive.

For those who want details of what's going to happen - I don't have them for you. We'll see in a few weeks, or hopefully months, what direction the cancer will progress in.

In better news, my little unborn nephew is growing and developing right on schedule! His name is Thor, which I love. I hope he looks like "Thor" when he makes his appearance. And please send some good thoughts my brother's way - he had my neice on trial full custody for 6 months, with his ex's blessing cuz she didn't want to be tied down to a kid. But when the ex got the court papers detailing the facts that she would no longer receive child support, and would have to actually be responsible for half of my neice's day care, she freaked and took my neice. She didn't leave the state or anything, so they can't count it as kidnapping, only that she "isn't fulfilling the terms of the custody agreement". That goes to court here soon, meanwhile it's been about 6 weeks she's had my neice and who knows what coaching the ex has done against my brother. It's breaking my heart. I can't imagine what is wrong with people that she can use her 5-year-old daughter like this.

Well, I guess that paragraph didn't end as better news... let's see... Oh, now that I'm not on chemo I can get tattoo'd again! I have so many plans for artwork, I don't even know where to begin.

Cheers

Twenty-six

Yeah so it's been a while since I've posted. There just isn't much going on.

I'm still on the chemo Gemzar. The cancer appears to be growing, but very slowly, so the drugs are helping at the moment. It's playing hell with my blood counts tho and I have to drink a ton of fluids to keep my blood pressure up. Unfortunately, they told me beer and whisky do not count as fluids in this case.

Wound care continues as before. The docs and nurses at the wound clinic think it won't close up/heal over while the tumor is there behind putting pressure on it. I saw another surgeon for a second opinion but no dice. The tumor is down into muscle so it's inoperable, and removing some of the tumor or some of the tissue isn't good because the body will know something's been removed and will step up efforts to regrow things there - I'd have a bigger mess than I do now.

The trip to Florida was great. We didn't see the shuttle launch, but the space center is amazing. We also spent a couple of days at Disneyworld. Sandra says she doesn't have to excercise for the rest of the year now - she got quite a workout pushing me around the parks in my wheelchair so I could save my energy for the fun stuff.

My sister's baby is a boy! He'll arrive sometime in July. I got to go to the ultrasound with her and her husband and it was very cool. He's big and healthy and developing right on track. He kept clutching and burying his head in the placenta during the ultrasound, just like a shy little kid might do with a blanket - it was cute.

Cheers

Twenty-five

Well, good thing I wasn't thinking about it and getting excited - NASA put the launch off for at least a week while they check a fuel valve. We're still going to Florida next week though. It'll be good to get away, even if things won't work out the way I'd hoped. We'll probably do a day tour of the Kennedy Space Center, and use the extra couple days we'd planned on for delays to see Disneyworld.

Cheers