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! 💗