Back on the Saddle!

Good news first! My liver appears to be fine...gallbladder fine...white blood counts fine (:-)..
My spleen is enlarged but I only know that from looking at the report. The doctor didn't seem bothered enough to mention it to me. Some of my blood work is still not in the normal range but I don't know what those values mean. Again, the doctor didn't explain them to me so either he isn't bothered by them or surprised. The biggest surprise of the day was the white blood cell count. I have not been doing the shots (per the doctor) and my counts doubled in a week. It's gotta be a mistake but I am living in the moment that something miraculous like that happened! Yeah!

I know you say those kind of mistakes don't happen but believe me...it can happen. Look at my CT reports and you wouldn't believe the mistake they made. It's somewhat comical the errors that can happen in my case... The doctor writing the CT report compared my most recent study with that of previous studies. The problem is he compared the March 2008 study to the one I had last week. That study was from tumor #1 (surgery April 2008 removed the whole thing with clear margins). We are on tumor #3! Not surprisingly, the reports states the tumors appear differently than in March 2008. I hope so! They aren't the same thing!! One would think the doctor who has written every report, for every study I have EVER had regarding these pesky little tumors would be aware of the history, especially since he had my intake form in his hot little hands!! Hey, I am special....special things happen to me.

The good news is I don't think it had an impact on the information that was obtained by the current CT and he compared it also to the November 2009 study which perfectly pictured my pesky little tumors (#3). The CT last week gave a glimmer of hope. My tumors are "stable". In my fantasyland, I was hoping for shrinkage but that probably isn't realistic. Stable is the next best thing. I confirmed with the doc before I got excited. Stable refers to NO CHANGE. They didn't shrink but they didn't grow. When I asked if he expected to see shrinkage at this early stage in treatment, he said no. So one could conclude that perhaps this treatment is working??? I hope so. It has been difficult and there is a long road ahead!

Up next...I start back on chemo next Tuesday. He has concluded that I am not tolerating this dosage very well. We won't get past two treatments if I stay at the current dosage. He thinks we should decrease the dosage of Methotrexate by 30%. The vinblastine will remain the same. I then posed him the question, "can we then expect this lessor dosage to be less effective?" Remember, we are already (before the decrease) operating at about a 40% chance of it actually working. He offered that one could effectively argue that my body is more sensitive to the medication, metabolizes it slower and therefore can be just as effective because it hangs around longer in my body and it is sensitive to it's effects. Yeah! I love it!

What I don't love is that starting Tuesday I go down my path again. It's a lonely road. It really, really sucks! I pray that I tolerate it better and my body does with it what it is supposed to do!

Loving meals this time around have kindly been provided by the Naranjo, Hererra, Van de Brooke, Santiago, Woo-Sam, Milton and Mendez families. It is from your friendship that we draw the strength to get through this with the least amount of harm. The kids look forward to seeing your families and are learning such a valuable lesson about love from you all. Thank you for wonderfully modeling acts of kindness that most are only able to talk about. My family gets to experience it! Thank you from the bottom of our very grateful hearts!!