MORE CANCER DISCOVERED TODAY

Thank you for being so sweet and available when I need someone. You are wonderful. I have such a great support group. I am back on steroids again. I have 5 very small tumors in my brain, apparently 4 of them are on the right side, and the largest one is only 2 cm. There is one on the other side but small. I start radiation Monday on my head and she said that my hair would all fall out again about the 3rd week. Radiation didin’t do that last time, but this time the radiation is directly on the head. She said that the radiation should kill the tumors completely, but this type of tumor comes back again and again. This is much harder to cure than the lung cancer also, for the same reason and that it’s all contained in this tight ‘box’ we call our skull. So they will be treating it like a brain injury like my son had. That’s what the steroids are, to reduce the swelling in my head from the tumors, and she said that my brain fog would go away also and I would feel fine again quickly. I bought a great book called “Your brain After Chemo” and read the whole thing last night. It’s perfect – tells you exactly everything about how you feel and what to do to make it better -



So we’re probably in for a long haul. So I will be fine for a while and then not fine again for a while. I am going to have a petscan next Friday I think because there is also something going on in my lower back. Dr Horadam said that I have major disc degeneration back there and that’s why my back is bothering me so much – it has been hurting for weeks. I have slept with an ice bag on my back every night.

What a pain in the a_ _ this is. I am trying to be positive as usual, so I know that my family (including you) are praying and God is watching over me again. I have lots of angels around me too, live ones like you guys and Pam, and my mom and all the rest who have passed on. The radiation she said is lots stronger than the ones for the lungs, she said she is “turning up the power”. They will make a mask for my head or face and the marks that they put on my chest that showed where the radiation machine would “point” every day will now be on the mask and I will just put the mask on every morning and they will know where to point the machine to radiate my head. She also said that later on there are other types of radiation that they can do if it comes back again, like the knife radiation and/or proton radiation that the do for specific spots like in testicular cancer or prostate cancer where it just zaps the one little spot.

Thanks again, love you all, keep praying.

It is 5 months since my last treatment now

Fall is in the air here in Dallas, and the temperature took a dive this week into the 80's during the day and 60's during the night, and even in the 50's a night or two. How nice it would be to go to New England during the coming month and see the wonderful fall foliage. We only get a few days of it here, and we don't get all the beautiful colors that they get up there.

I went in to the oncology center this morning to get an infusion of Reclast, which is a drug for treatment of bone density problems. Apparently one more side effect of chemo is some bone loss. Being in my 60's and already having osteopenia, I assume that I was destined to have more deterioration anyway. Sure enough. But this drug I got is going to slow down the bone loss, and it lasts for a year ! So I don't have to go back until this time next Fall to get it again. This is also the drug that they give bone cancer patients or people who have cancer that has spread to the bones. There are no particular side effects and it apparently works very well. My doctor said that there is evidence in some areas that it has helped cancer to not come back.

I also got my flu shot this morning. It's REALLY important this year to get those, even more than usual, for everyone. Especially for us older people whether we have been sick or not. So GO GET THE FLU SHOT.