New Chemo Regime

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 head up for an infusion cocktail of a few drugs, including anti-nausea meds. They will then attach a pump to my port which will infuse further meds over a 24-hour period. Upon removal of the pump, I’ll be given an injection to encourage white blood cell production.

In addition to all of that, I’ll be taking a daily chemotherapy tablet at home. What drug it will be is still up in the air. My specialist wants to change to something new, but the insurance declined it so we are currently in an appeal process. If the new drug doesn’t get approved, they will put me back on daily Votrient. Like I said, with everything, it’s quite a mix of meds. 

Meanwhile, my back pain continues (we call it back pain, but we are fairly sure it emanates from the original tumor site in my abdomen). I don’t want to sound whiney, but I will even say that it’s gotten worse. There’s always pain, but that’s accompanied by intense flare ups throughout the day. These can be rough - they take my breath away. With the increase in pain intensity, there is some talk about changing my current pain regimen to something even stronger. We should know more about that in the coming weeks. 

As always, Jim and I appreciate your prayers, your encouragement and your kindnesses. We are blessed to have such a wonderful support system.

Jim thinks there should always be at least one picture in our posts … so one more from our trip. One of the best parts of this last trip — which was our first cruise alone, just the two of us — was meeting people. We had dinner most nights in the dining room and asked to sit with a random group. It was so much fun meeting new people. We also met a few folks at other times. We ended up having dinner with one couple — Mary and a David —  three times, which allowed time to get to know them. We hope our paths will cross again; we had such a good time. 

Left next to Kristi: David and Mary

Jeff and Richard, next to Jim, were also great fun. This was one of our favorite evenings.  Also, interesting to note, most of the passengers were British — just enough cultural differences to have some interesting conversations. Jeff kept referring to the U.S. as the colonies … 😂