Hello to all. I hope this message finds you doing well.
Bobbie has just completed her second round of Temodar chemotherapy this past Saturday. This round of treatment went very much like the last - lots of fatigue and better controlled nausea. However, this round brought with it some significant joint pain which came as a surprise. The continued use of steroids is, no doubt, contributing to that as well as bringing with it a host of other no fun symptoms. However, the steroids themselves are, at this time, more important than the discomfort of the side effects. She stayed with my parents in VA for this round, which took care of making sure Killian was looked after while she was able to kick back and rest as best she could during it.
Between the first and second treatment rounds, Bobbie was having some pretty significant headaches along with some dizziness, so they started her on the steroids to offset the headache and she had an MRI of the brain two weeks ago. It showed new growths and a total of somewhere between 6-9 tumors (sadly, I cannot remember the exact count), of which 4 were "of concern". At that time, her medical oncologist put a call in and setup an appointment with the neurosurgeon that was in charge of her Gliadel wafer trials in association with the surgery on her initial brain tumor back in November and has been engaged with her brain treatments thereafter, including the cyberknife treatment. We met with him yesterday but he had not received the MRI from Rex at that point and could not give authoritative advice on where we go from here, but we did have extensive discussion as far as what some of the options would be given certain scenarios. The MRI in question was dropped off at his clinic today at UNC and we expect to hear from him on Wednesday or Thursday at the latest when he has had an opportunity to review the images to discuss the options at hand. In addition, he is going to have another MRI done on Bobbie in 2 weeks to assess the effects of the Temodar treatments for better or worse. As a bonus, Bobbie's blood sugar was reading high on her check-up appointment after the first treatment, so her oncologist prescribed a glucose checking device (finger pricker) for her to use 2x/day (before breakfast & before dinner) as well as a sliding scale of insulin if her reading comes in to high. The good news is that she has not required a dose of insulin yet as her readings have been in check.
I won't bother going into all that was discussed with the neurosurgeon because only the path that is decided to go forward will really matter and that decision will not come into play until we have heard back from the neurosurgeon. Suffice it to say that the options continue to dwindle, but that hope remains strong. I will be certain to get another update out once we have information as to the direction we will take going forward.
In the meantime, Bobbie keeps reminding me to make sure to thank everyone when I send these updates. Of course, I have no need to be reminded as I continue to be indescribably thankful to the many offering help and encouragement. She and are carrying forth in making our way through episodes of Lost by way of DVD on nights when she is feeling up to it. We just completed season 2 and are ready to kick into season 3 when the opportunity arises.
Killian maintains his inadvertent focus on being a great kid through the ordeal but I fear that he gets wiser to the situation as time goes on. His birthday is coming up on the 24th of this month. I can't believe he is already turning 5. I got him signed up for after school care and track out care this coming school year, so that should help us not have to constantly ask for assistance in watching him as Bobbie's energy levels are far from what they need to be to keep up with an active 5 year old boy. Hopefully this will help keep her mind at ease and let her get the rest that she needs. I know it will help mine relax some and hope that it will give Killian a chance to enjoy the company of many other kids and burn off some of that energy during the day.
More to come soon.
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