The Next Mountain to Climb

The month following Christmas has been a little bit of a roller coaster ride. The absence of Dr. Ganjoo – Kristi’s primary oncologist who has been out for her own personal family reasons – has caused some confusion and frustration. We aren’t complaining, it is just the current reality. Thankfully, her proxy, Dr. Bui, has been able to step in and provide some guidance. Pain update: The pain management team has increased her pain meds – we learned that her previous dosages were pretty low. The increase has helped a little, emphasis on little. Treatment update: At the end of November, Kristi stopped Votrient. She was actually quite sick with a respiratory infection; her doctor wanted her to fully recover from that before any further treatment. The last time we spoke with Dr. Ganjoo we thought she would start a new drug and immunotherapy. Remember, we were confused about beginning the Yondelis three weeks ago? Yondelis can work to slow down disease progression, but unfortunately, Kristi’s ...

Our last post was mostly a chance to say Merry Christmas. We were very ambiguous about treatment, etc. — partly because we weren’t sure and partly because we were enjoying the break from treatment and didn’t want to think about it too much. We have more to say today. 😁 Yesterday, I had an appointment scheduled with my Fresno oncologist — he provides infusions and blood work checks for Stanford, saving us some time and driving. We thought this was a check up and discussion about the next steps for treatment. Imagine my surprise when he told me that I would head to the infusion room to start treatment as soon as he finished his checkup!  The current treatment plan is multi-faceted. Every 3 weeks, I will see him in Fresno for a rather extensive set of bloodwork. The new regime has the potential for some negative side effects in the liver, kidneys, and GI tract, so they will be monitoring those functions quite closely. As long as the bloodwork comes back in acceptable levels, I’ll hea...