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. 🐊