March 14, 2012

Same ol' song and dance, my friends

Last week I made my scheduled trip to Boston. I departed Kansas City with a forecast calling for 70 degrees and landed in Boston to a chilly 27 degrees. It was just someone’s way of reminding me that it’s not quite spring!
 
This trip to Boston did not include scans, so it was a roundtrip, one day schedule.  The meeting with the doctor was quick but full of good news.  He had the official Radiologist report from the pharmaceutical company (Exelixis) and they reported the when comparing my baseline scans from August to my most recent scans from late January, the overall reduction in my bone tumors was 95%! Seriously! So refreshing to receive good news! Although managing the side effects of this treatment have been a challenge and definitely impacted our quality of life, we know that ultimately the treatment is combatting the cancer, so it is all good.
This means for now, we just keep headed down this path to see how long we can make this last. For now, I won't return until mid-April and with that appointment I will have scans again. As long as we see at least stability on those scans, we move forward.

The rest of  the week was up and down emotionally. Our young friend passed away, the funeral was wonderful, but I could not talk to her husband. When I opened my mouth, I just wanted to cry. He said he felt the same way. Fortunatley Mary was there to keep it together. We continue to pray for him and his young son, who is truly an awesome young man.
In additional to that, we continue to pray for one of the long time contributors to the 'advancedprostatecancer' group at Yahoo Groups. I mentioned John A. here in my last post. He had a bad few days, but is still going strong.

Thursday night my brother Doug called and asked if he and his wife could come up to visit. It was fun! We watched a lot of college basketball, cooked and ate too much! So enjoyed their company!

The weather this week is calling for over seventy degrees every day! After work walks with Mary will be in order every evening! It is enlightening to have Spring at our door!

5 comments:

chrisr said...

Dave,

95%! Wow. I am on Healingwell quite alot. I was dx. 3.5 years ago. I am thrilled to hear about your results. I am sure they will last.

Anonymous said...

Dave,

Congrats, you have earned this positive report. We are also 7 years on our journey and we had our first "re-staging" on XL 184 last week at MD Anderson. We had some good lymph node reduction as well as reduction in lesions in spine, pelvis and vertebrae. We have learned to be only cautiously optimistic. PSA still soaring and in fact has doubled in six weeks so we still struggle with that.

Keep up the fight. We are just a few months behind you.

Anonymous said...

David ,Cogratulations on the 75% reduction,that is truly amazing.
I wonder if they have any idea how far we are away from approval on this drug. I noticed the trial is now closed to new entants except in Michigan and for other cancers.
I wish they could find soe way of holding the psa back or even slowing it down.
Dan J

Anonymous said...

David ,
I meant to write 95%, I must have hit the wrong key.
Dan J

swatimittal@yahoo.com said...

Hi Dave,

95%, whoa!
Does the current pain level reflect this ?

Swati