July 19, 2007

• Bad News

  Hello All.

  Well, I am home.  Have been for more than 4 hours.  Sent home early.  No chemo.

   Here’s what’s up so that you all can be praying and feel free to share as you see fit.  Dr. H and I had a long meeting this morning.  He pulled out my radiology report that compared my February scan to the scan I had while I was in the hospital last month.  What the new scan showed is that not only is my tumor not responding to the chemotherapy, but it has grown, in fact doubled in size.  When we were told that February was 9.7 cm and this one was 10 cm, that was only looking at one dimension.  The depth of the tumor is twice what it was in February.  There is also a new tumor.  It is partially necrotic, or dead, which doesn’t mean that chemo has taken care of it.  What that means is that it has tried to grow faster than it can feed itself.  So parts of it in the center have died of starvation.  But the new tumor is 3cm squared, and I have a bruise where that tumor is.  So the tumor may have ruptured.

  Because this chemotherapy regimen has been so tough, he chose not to do any treatment today.  He says that he isn’t ready to give up, but that we need to start chunking through other chemo drugs to see if we can find one that will hold the cancer at bay.  Especially since the invasion into my bones has also doubled.  Thus the increase in pain.

  SO, on Monday, I start weekly treatment with a drug called 5-FU. It is easier on the system than the combination of drugs that I have been on.  It only takes 2 hours to infuse, so as I stay on a 6 hour schedule, I will be able to work even on chemo days.  5-FU is given for 5 weeks then a 2 week break.  During that 2 week break, I will get another scan to see if the cancer is responding.

  To answer some questions that will likely come up:

  • Dr. H is calling up to the University of Colorado to see if they have a gynecological oncologist who might give him some more guidance on what to do.  
  • Yes, they’re now certain that this is a recurrence of the cervical cancer that I had 7 years ago, as the chemo regimen that I have been on is the protocol for ovarian cancer, and has not shown any positive signs of killing the cancer. 
  • If the scan in 5+ weeks shows growth, we move on to a chemo drug that is given in pill form.  I would take it every night for 3 weeks, then a week off. 
  • Dr. H is not ready to give up.  He said that the drugs that he has had me on, he would not have given to half of his patients because they could not handle it. So the fact that I came through as well as I did is huge. 
  • He has not given me a prognosis as far as how much time I have left.  At some point, he mentioned a year, but he said that it was just a number that he threw out there.  That only God knows how much time I have left, and He hasn’t let Dr. H in on the secret.  

  So that’s where we’re at.  I’ve done a lot of crying today, and we had good friends and 2 pastors here when I got home to help me talk to Paul and the girls.

  Much love to all of you.  Thank you for your prayers and for your support.  There are times that those are the only things outside of the love of Christ that are sustaining me.

  • 5:46 pm
  • 29 Comments