The Latest

Well it has been an eventful time since our last post.  Right after our last post Paula started experiencing a lot of discomfort.  She was having pain when she stood up, walked and sat down so the only thing she could do to be comfortable was lay down.  So for a week that is all she did.  Two weeks ago today Paula was to have a chemo treatment but when we got to the hospital she was so uncomfortable that it was decided to skip that treatment and see if we could get her into a doctor to figure out if there was something that could be done to ease the pain.  That afternoon we were able to get into Dr. Bossart’s office.  He is a friend from church and the doctor that saw Paula during the first week of all this fun.  He discovered that the stint that was in Paula’s colon had moved down and that was what was causing all the pain so he just took it out.  Now I would say that this procedure was unpleasant (Paula says it was worse then childbirth but I have no frame of reference on either of these) but as soon as it was out Paula felt immediate relief.  Paula has continued to feel better throughout the past two weeks.  With a break from the chemo her hands healed up (they were really cracking and peeling) and she has been eating like crazy.  Seriously, in our 21 years of marriage I have never seen her eat this much.  I guess it all the good food that she has at her disposal.  Kudos to the cook (sorry for the self indulgence).  This is good as she actually lost more weight during the week when she was so uncomfortable.  She had dropped all the way down to 80 lbs.

Yesterday Paula had her first CT scan since starting the chemo.  We have been anxious to see the results as we know there have been so many people praying for Paula.  So this morning we came back to Huntsman for Paula’s treatment.  The first good sign of the day is that when we were driving to the hospital the airbag sensor in the passenger seat didn’t automatically turn off the airbag.  It has done this pretty much since the beginning of chemo because Paula has not weighed enough.  When they weighed Paula this morning she was a whopping 90 lbs!  She gained 1o lbs in two weeks.  I know for most of you this is not something to celebrate but Paula hasn’t weigh 90 lbs since mid September.  The doctor then gave us the results of the CT scan.  All the tumors on Paula’s liver have shrunk by 50% and there were no new lymph nodes that were infected.  The colon tumor we are told is not as easily read on a CT scan but looked to not be to much smaller.  However, they say this is typical and that although it may not shrink much the make up of this tumor surely has.  As this tumor dies the cells die and therefore the tumor my be more dead tissue then live cancer.  We know it has shrunk as the stint came out so this is all good.  Also Paula’s tumor marker came down from 43.5 to 22.1 as well as her white blood cells were at a normal level.   At this point we will continue to do the chemo treatments through December.  Then the thought is to put Paula on a maintenance treatment.  This means that she will still come every 2 weeks but will only get her iron, avaston and then go home with the chemo ball for 46 hours.

So all this to say, things are moving in the right direction.  Thank you for all the prayers and please continue to pray for complete and permanent healing.

Eric

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