March

March has felt like the shortest, yet longest.month.ever.

I was able to make it to DC to celebrate the Brody-Hart nuptials and it was the perfect weekend. I saw so many friends and spent most of the time laughing. Thank you to everyone who made time to see me! Of course after a few days of fun, I came down with a virus of some sort and was in bed for a solid week. Yuck. The only upside to being sick was that I finally started watching Scandal and became instantly obsessed. In a few days time I managed to binge watch every single episode (yes, that's 31.5 hours). Seriously though, why wasn't my life that exciting when I lived in DC?

My mom recovered from surgery extremely well! I could not believe her determination to regain her strength. She has been out and about, which is really great to see and there are moments when I almost forget that she's sick. She had a CT scan earlier in the week and it was clean -- no tumor growth or visible evidence of cancer.

We met with the oncologist on Friday to discuss the next phase of her treatment plan. Unlike in the past, when we had very few decisions to make since her treatment followed a standard plan, we now have some decisions to make.

The first decision regards her chemo regiment -- do we change drugs, do we change the dosage, do we switch to infusion every three weeks instead of weekly, etc. In the end, my mom decided to stay on the same combination of drugs and continue with weekly infusion since she responded so well during the first phase.

The second discussion surrounded a "maintenance" drug called Avastin, which is an off-label, non-FDA approved drug used to prolong a patients remission time. It's administered with the final cycles of chemo and then every month for as long as the body can tolerate it or until there is a recurrence of cancer. In trial studies, it has an average prolonged remission time of four months. 

On Friday, my mom asked the oncologist what he thought the average remission time was for someone similar to her (stage IV, responded well to chemo, optimally debulked, etc.). He responded that almost all patients have a recurrence within the first two years, although he's seen some as soon as three months. Statistically speaking, the average is around ten months.

I have no doubt that my mom will be on the longer end of the spectrum.

Anyway, while Avastin prolongs remission time, it has some really scary side effects that require monitoring. Additionally, it is very expensive ($50-100k, depending on how much your insurance covers). So the question becomes: do you opt out of maintenance and enjoy your remission with no side effects or do you take a risk and hope the drug gives you extra months?

This has been a really difficult decision for my mom. She wants to spend the next year traveling and hitting her bucket list, and she doesn't want to worry about finding an infusion center or having one of the scary side effects occur while she's abroad. Furthermore, she wants to spend her time off chemo feeling "normal" and not sick. It really comes down to quality of life. Thus, at this point, she has chosen not to receive Avastin. I can completely understand her decision, although it's a little more difficult for me as I just want her to have as much time as possible. 

Tomorrow we start the chemo routine again, which is a little hard to swallow because I hate seeing my mom sick. She's so strong right now and it's great having her back, and within a few days she'll be weak again. Although, the good news is that given her excellent surgical outcome, they have cut her chemo from six cycles (18 weeks) to three cycles (9 weeks), so the sooner she starts the sooner it'll be over.

So that's where things stand. 

March has proven to be a huge challenge. There are days when I'm completely exhausted from all of this...the appointments, waiting for results, the day-to-day caretaking, and the continued unknown, etc. This cancer has completely consumed our lives and at times it drains me both mentally and physically. The continued cold weather has not helped either, so I'm putting my money on April to change things around. Until then, I'll continue to think of summer and the various weddings where I'll get to see my favorite ladies -- I really miss my Wooster girls.

I'm spending the month of May in Uganda, so I just need to get through the next month and then I will have a break. Well, kind of, it's still work, but a change of scenery is very welcomed at this point. I really need to get away for a bit and just breathe.

As always, thanks for all the continued love and support.

We're home!

My mom was discharged from the hospital on Friday!

She is so happy to be home and in her own bed. We're doing our best to keep her comfortable, but as we all know, the abdominal area is very tricky and we often forget how much we use our core.

The docs said it will take about 6 weeks for her to feel like herself again, although once chemo is added back into the mix in 2-3 weeks, it'll be interesting.

Next week she gets her staples out, so until then it's bed rest with some short walks down the hallway.

Thanks to more snow and continued frigid temps, I foresee a lot of bad tv in our future. Thank god our weekly shows are back!