Finally Home

Not only was everything running nearly two hours behind at the doctor today, when we got out my Mom had a situation and needed us to go over and help. Now that all is good with her we are finally home.

The news on Sandi was/is stunningly good. Near as they can tell from the PET Scan the spinal tumor has shrunk about 50 percent. They can't tell exactly because there is still some sort of heat signature  at the site and that makes it hard to image and measure. This could be caused by the radiation still leaving her body. It could be caused by the tumor trying to, basically, come back to life. They just don't know.

Not only is the spinal tumor smaller, there are not any other tumors. Except for the spinal tumor, she is free of cancer everywhere else! This means, while she is not considered in remission, she is as close to that designation as possible.

Blood work was also astoundingly good across the board. Not only are her numbers stable, they are trending upward month to month. in fact, today she had nearly normal blood work.

So, the current plan is to have her do an MRI sometime in the next two weeks. This will be done to accurately image and measure the exact size of the tumor.

For the next three months, starting on November 17, she will go in once a month to flush her port and do blood work as well as visit with the doctor. This is just to make sure that she stays stable.

At some point in late January or early February they will MRI her again and image and measure the tumor size. The hope is that it by the then the tumor will either have shrunk some more or not changed at all in size. There is a possibility that the tumor is dead and can not compact further. If that has happened the belief is that the tumor pictures should be the same then as well as what they get now.

All this is a very long way of saying that what has happened far exceeds anything that anybody thought was remotely possible. Everyone involved is stunned by the results. We are thrilled beyond belief and just blown away by this news. 

It has been an exhausting day.