February 19, 2007
We have the trip to Florida coming up next weekend, for Andrea’s dad David Behrns’ memorial service. Andrea and Betty have put together a wonderful collection of photos for the service. My dad will be officiating.
Dan and I got the chance to visit with him in the hospital towards the end of last year, and he was as upbeat as ever. I always found David to be a very warm and friendly guy, and he will be missed dearly.
It’s good timing for me, I’m feeling much better, just waiting for the side effects to completely dissipate. A little nausea and the daily morning nosebleeds from all the dry air are all that are left. Life goes on relatively normally, as you can read on the main page. Time to focus on getting in shape for the “mother of all surgeries”. I see the doctor to schedule the date on February 28, the day after we get back from Florida (and the day after our 14th wedding anniversary, whoop!).
February 28, 2007
A BIG day! Andrea and I went to Winston-Salem to see the good Dr. Levine. I started with a new CT scan, which took up the morning. I am getting used to these things, unfortunately – I asked how much radiation exposure there is, and was told a chest x-ray is equivalent to about 8 hours in the sun, and the CT scan is basically equivalent to hundreds of x-rays. C’est la vie. Then we met with the man himself. He’s wonderfully personable, fun to talk to, but maybe I am biased by the fact that he had a lot of good news! He said that the CT scan showed some cancer on the outside of the liver, below the diaphragm, but he didn’t see any around the spleen or elsewhere – so it looks like the chemotherapy was effective in reducing the cancer! Also, after months of waiting, we reached the moment where he pulled out his very own blackberry with his very own surgery schedule. We’re set for April 9th. We realized later that this is the day after Easter, which will cause no small amount of logistics challenges! I was too scared to try to change it, so I told Andrea I’d try to be more helpful with getting everything in order. She’s a trooper.
The most interesting part of the visit was the offering of participating in some clinical trials. Wake Hospital is a teaching facility, involved in all the latest research trials. The ones that applied to me were a follow-up survey program (of course I’m in on that one), and a chance to use Oxalyplatin instead of Mitomyacin C for the heated chemotherapy wash. That’s the tough one. The pro’s are that it has greater efficacy when not heated, and should be a double-whammy when heated. There is a lot of excitement about this approach, from what I understand. The con’s are that it’s brand new (a Phase 1 trial), so I would be going where no one has gone before. They leave a small amount of tumor in during the wash, to see the effect of the wash. And the correct dosage is basically unknown – they will be checking the amount of Oxalyplatin in my blood as I’m washed, to figure this out. The dosage will be minimal, since they have to make sure they don’t give me too much. These are the things that will be weighing on my mind until the surgery. I am pretty sure I’m going to want to go for it – not only does it sound like it is a better approach, despite the unknowns, but I will be contributing to helping others in the future. The battle continues!
In the meantime, I am in marathon training mode! Biked to work today with some new gear from my mum. Thanks again mum!