Start of Cycle 3!

Another boring trip to ATL in the books! Those are the ones we like. We were able to meet with mom's same crew of doctors, except for her new oncologist - she is a new addition.

We got there on Tuesday morning (super early) and waited basically all day for mom to get her labs, and then get a CT. On Wednesday, she had her [now usual] echocardiogram to see if the effusion on her pericardium was any bigger. Her cardiologist, Dr. Glass, was pleased to see that it actually looked like it was possibly a bit smaller this time. Hayyyy! 🙌That was the first bit of good news for the trip (but wait, there's more..)!

After that appointment, we met with Dr. Parks, her pulmonary doctor. We cannot say enough good things about this doctor. He is SO thorough, so pleasant, and apparently very good at what he does because he has really helped mom's cough. 🎉He lets us see Mom's scans and will show us basically anything we want to see and takes as much time as we need. He also does his best to explain everything until we understand what he is saying. And this time, he showed us Mom's most recent CT and he said the nodules in her lungs do look to be a little smaller from the impromptu scan a month before. Not only that, but the fluid at the bottom of her lung was almost completely gone! When all of this started again in May, she had a lymph node that sits between her lungs and it was enlarged (because we found out there was a tumor), BUT now there is no evidence that is enlarged anymore. There still may be something in there, but it seems to have shrunk at the least.

So, what does all of this mean?!

Well, after hearing that her labs showed that 2 of her tumor markers had come down AGAIN, basically to normal levels, on top of everything else, I somehow got my hopes up that they would say to Mom, "Hey, you're probably exhausted after everything you've endured this summer - let's take a break and monitor." Looking back, that was not my smartest assumption, because the treatment is clearly working, so of course, they wouldn't just stop when it could possibly reduce her numbers and tumors even more. So, we met with her new oncologist, Dr. Pabatthi, and her recommendation was to stay the current course, and to do another CT in November. So, we told her that we were hoping there'd be a break sooner than that. She did say that if Mom decided she just needed to skip a treatment or 2 to regain her strength and a better mentality (if it got to that point because for now, she is actually feeling pretty good, considering), they said that they would gladly pause the treatment. But, it didn't sound like they would be recommending her to stop treatment, unless symptoms got worse, or unless there was evidence that the cancer began progressing again (probably indicative through labs).

My one disappointment this trip was in meeting her new oncologist. She was friendly and everything you'd want in an oncologist in that regard, but it seemed like she was literally reading mom's chart for the first time in front of us. We had to correct her several times on details, and it didn't do a lot for my confidence level. There was one thing she said when mom and I looked at each other in a panic because it went against everything that we heard in the previous appointment. It's early, but that really did put a damper on my first impression. Clearly there are worse things, so I'm just trying to be grateful for the good things that came from the trip. 

She is still getting around pretty well on her hip, and I even noticed when I got to her house last week, that she was moving around considerably better. So really, it's progress all around. 😌

Here's hoping we have more boring trips to ATL in our future, that bring only good news. We do have a fun trip to New Orleans planned for the end of September with some cousins, so we have something to look forward to... and something for mom to work towards so that she is able to walk around and enjoy the bayou with ease. 🐊

2nd Treatment - 2nd Cycle Complete

I'm late with an update, but that can be seen as good news -- not much to report and things have been relatively "normal." Well, as normal as can be under these circumstances. Her tumor markers have continued to come down as of last week, as evidenced by her lab work (more good news!). We will get the routine CT scan next week, since she'll have completed 2 whole cycles, to see what progress has been made in size and number of tumors. As long as the tumors seem to be responding (in a positive way), she will continue to get both the immunotherapy and chemotherapy. We were told they will likely only stop if she stops responding or her health gets worse.

She has slowly started to adapt to the side effects and it's very uniform in the way that it affects her. She gets her treatment on Wednesday, and usually by Saturday night, she's feeling her worst. By Sunday night into Monday, she can tell she's over the hump and starting to feel better. The only real obstacle at that point is getting her hip to cooperate. She still has good days and bad days with regard to progress there. She's noticed that once she can get up and get moving, she moves pretty well! She still is on the slow side, because her breathing can give her problems, but we are slowly seeing improvements there as well -- thanks to the excellent care she's getting from her pulmonary doctor at CTCA. She only uses a cane when we go to ATL, and she doesn't really use it much. She likes to carry it though because she says it lets people know that she's got something going on, and she isn't just dilly-dallying through the airport and other places (for you non-southerners that read this and may not be familiar with the term, dilly-dallying means fiddle-farting, mosying, lolly-gagging, etc)😜. I told mom she should just get a little orange flag to dangle behind her to let people know to "CAUTION." 😂 #beepbeepbeep

So, the best case scenario from this point is that the tumors can't be seen anymore in the CT and we can take a break from the chemo (and they would continue the immunotherapy alone -- which means she ideally wouldn't feel as bad, and she may even get her hair back!). To be clear -- we aren't expecting this outcome at this point, but miracles do happen from time to time. A step down from that would be that the tumors are getting smaller and they think they can still do better by getting them even smaller with more chemo and immunotherapy, and we continue on as we have been. I'm not sure if there's a point when they would suggest she not do anything at all, but there's always that hope (assuming that doesn't implicate that things are going south, of course).

Another thing that's changed is that she gets a new oncologist next week. Her previous doctor (Dr. Alvarez, aka - Dr. Ricky 😂) took another job back in Houston to continue his ongoing research in the metastatic breast cancer field. We will miss him so much as he has been a constant in our lives for the last 2 years in some capacity, but the work he is doing will help so many people like Mom. We definitely encourage him to press on in that line of work!

But that's it for the most part. She's still chugging along like she always has and she's just as fiesty as ever! 😉The little things that family and friends have done to help, have meant a lot to all of us, and especially her. Everything from the odd jobs around the house, the meals and food that have been brought by, the visits, and the cards and messages of support have been lovely. Thank y'all so much! 💗