Just rolling along

It's been a few weeks since our last update here, so I figured I would dust off the old blog and give the latest.  Well, there really isn't a whole lot.  Denise continues to be on the mend from her chemo.  The biggest problem is still with her legs.  The water is beginning to shed itself off and her feet are returning to normal, but her legs still get sore from time to time leading to discomfort.  The afib is easing as well.  Her cardiologist gave her some different meds and that seems to be having a positive effect on her.  She's been back to work more regularly too the past couple weeks and as she loves her job, that has done a lot for her spirits.   She's also using a technique a former coworker of mine shared with me.  She too had a battle with cancer over this past year and had returned to work before I left.  Her advice to Denise was to nap at lunch.  There's a meeting room where Denise works that is normally not in use so she's been ducking away in there and catching some sleep over lunch.  She's saying it REALLY helps.  Thanks for that tip, Diane!
(Truly, if you need great vet care, drop me a line and I can give you a referral.) 

So with things on the mend and her getting back to life that's the new normal, we can start concentrating on the important things.  Like our sons wedding in July, hopefully the trip to Ireland to follow that and the birth of our grandson in September.  Still seems weird to me to say, "our grandson".  

Our hero seen here baby clothes shopping!

Not that I am opposed to the birth mind you, not one bit, just the fact of I've now gotten old enough to be a grandparent.  When did I get old?  She, of course, is ecstatic over the fact of being a grandmother and wanted to go clothes shopping for him this past weekend. 

Anyways, we are still on track for the June 6th appointment for another scan and follow-up appointment and hopefully then we can start moving past this stage completely and on to the future. 

So that's it for now.  Hopefully will have some good news to share in a couple weeks, but for now we'll just keep rolling along. 

6 Weeks

Denise had her follow-up CAT scan and results meeting with the doctor today.  The nice thing about this visit was that we were able to do both things the same day!  We had to get up at stupid o'clock and head out the door to make it there for her 7:30 AM appointment.  Driving into Cleveland is a crap shoot during rush hour and we didn't want to take any chances.  We got there plenty early enough and they took her right back and got her prepped.  The scan went well and then we had a couple hours to kill before her other appointment.  

When it was time for the appointment, the doctor came in and right away told us the results.  

Nothing new on the scans!  

Everything was just as it has been on the last couple scans, no changes, nothing new.  But, he wants to play it safe and do another scan in 6 weeks rather than 3 months.  There's a few areas he wants to keep his eyes on just to make sure there's nothing to be worried about and he seems confident there isn't anything to worry about, but he wants to be sure.  Also, her blood numbers are getting back into shape properly, so that is a good sign!  Her white blood counts have been rising faster than gas prices, but they are on the way back down.

So for now we are playing it optimistically happy, but, have to wait until the next round to know for sure.  At least for now he said that she no longer has to go through any more chemo, we are done! Hopefully for good!  The only ongoing concern is the amount of water she is still retaining which is a known side effect of the chemo.  Hopefully that will go down because it's causing her a lot of uncomfortableness when she walks around.  Her muscles feel pretty beat up from it all.  

So with that news, we headed out the door and went to enjoy a lunch to celebrate our wedding anniversary today.  Hopefully between now and June 6th her life will start getting back to normal.  For now, we'll just take it one day at a time.

Editors note: The Cleveland Clinic has a REALLY good cafeteria.  Pancakes, good ones too, only .69 cents each!  A steal!  That's how we passed some of the time between appointments. 

The End?

The last Taxotere?

Well, we got some interesting news today.  We're up here in Cleveland at the clinic for her treatment, the big week with two treatments, and Doctor M is confident that this, the 5th round of chemo should be sufficient to combat the cancer!  So, we could:
1.  Be done
2.  Just do the first week of the 6th cycle and get the normal 1 Gencitabine treatment
3.  Do the 6th cycle with two weeks of Gencitabine and no Taxotere
We talked about it for a while with the doctor and we landed on this action plan. As I stated above he feels very confident that 5 rounds of chemo is enough to kill off this cancer.  He doesn't have any data that suggested we must complete 6, but 5 should be good enough.  We however figure if we can do at least the 1st week of cycle 6, we would feel better and he frankly has not problems with that and supports that approach.  BUT, since this is week 2 of the cycles, this is historically when things go wonky for Denise.  Already these past couple of weeks the water retention has gotten pretty bad and she is up about 25lbs in weight just from the water. The plan for now we are going to wait and see.  If she makes it through this week without incidents of dehydration, UTI's or a frantic heart, then we are going to go with one more Gencitabine treatment.  If, however, we run into problems, then we may hold off or cancel all together.
We know we're not out of the woods yet.  There is still a lot of road ahead of us but at least there is a feeling in our hearts that there is even more road behind us.  She's got a new round of prescriptions called into the pharmacy so on our way home tonight we'll stop and get those.  Hopefully we can get rid of all this excess water in her system because that's the big stress on her system now.  If that can get regulated, then hopefully other things can get working and her healing from this can begin.
For now, we celebrate!