Radiation DONE!!!!!!

No more radiation for me!! Today was my last treatment of radiation and I am so relieved. The radiation itself wasn't bad at all, but the daily drive was really starting to wear me down. I successfully completed all 22 treatments and as I was leaving the clinic today, the two sweet radiation nurses Fayth and Angie gave me a Relay for Life Survivor t-shirt and an actual certificate with my name on it that said I completed my radiation treatment! It was very sweet, and although I will not miss the treatments, I will miss the nurses. I do return to Alex City at the end of August, but just for a check up. The radiation is supposed to continue to work for a while so I should still see results for a while.

I also went up to UAB today to meet with my oncologist. All they did was blood work and all my numbers were good!! My white blood cell count was slightly down, but nothing to bring alarm. I just started my second round of the Sutent so she went ahead and scheduled my next CT scan for September 1. That will allow me to have 2 full rounds of Sutent to see if it's working.

And on a final note, I leave for Houston this saturday and go to MD Anderson Monday, August 2. They'll evaluate me for the Phase I Trial and see if I qualify. If the Sutent doesn't seem to be working, my oncologist wants the next plan in place so we don't lose any time for treatment. So the trial is more or less a back-up plan. We'll just keep praying that the Sutent works!! I'll update everyone next week after I meet with the doctors at MD Anderson. Thank you all for the prayers and keep them up! We're bound to get some good news soon - we're way past due!!

Real Quick Update

Not much new to report, but my blood pressure has continued to stay low. I've been taking the Sutent and the doctor said that was more than likely the culprit. And although high blood pressure isn't necessarily a good thing, there was an article a nurse found in an oncology journal that did a study and said that patients who obtained a systolic blood pressure reading above 140 (which I had) generally received better results with the Sutent! So hopefully that's a good sign then! I only have 6 more radiation treatments - YAY!!!!! They are still going good, just wearing me out. I'm tired a lot, but that's more than likely because of the radiation. My last treatment is next wednesday, July 28, which is also when I go see my oncologist in UAB next. And then the following week I'm off to MD Anderson. But for now, that's about it. Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers and please keep them coming - we've still got a long way to go!

Blood Pressure lowered

Well, my blood pressure has come down since this weekend. I checked it everyday and all weekend it ran about 130/105, if not slightly higher. Sunday I had a pretty bad headache, which could potentially be from the raised blood pressure. I returned to the doctor Tuesday for radiation treatment and my blood pressure had come down to 121/88!! We're not sure what might have caused it to lower itself, but it did! And yesterday (wednesday) it was 131/92. So its come down significantly. Its still not quite as low as usual so they said to keep monitoring it.

I returned to UAB yesterday for a quick appointment with my endocrinologist. Since they've started radiation and they're radiating the one working adrenal gland I have, they were concerned about further suppressing it and my endocrinologist just wanted to check in with me and see how things were going. He switched my steroid from Cortef to Prednisone, simply because I take the Cortef in the AM and afternoon and keep forgetting to take the afternoon dose, whereas the prednisone is once a day and much easier to remember.

One last thing... I talked to MD Anderson and I am going out to Houston in August to be evaluated for a clinical trial. They said I would be a good candidate so I'm headed out there to visit my dad and at the same time see if I can get on this trial! Please pray that I qualify!

Quick Update

Nothing really new to report, but I have some good news and some potentially not so good news... The good news is I got a letter from our insurance that they will cover the Sutent for me!! Praise the Lord!! I'm not sure how to go about getting the medicine (through my local pharmacy or a specialty pharmacy) but at least it will be covered! I'm waiting to hear from my doctor the next step. The potentially not so good news is that my blood pressure has been really high all week and we're not sure yet what's causing it to be. Monday it was 130/97, which is high in general, especially for me. I started getting a headache monday and it hasn't really gone away. So yesterday (wednesday) I went up to Walgreens and had them check it and it was still a little high at 113/91. I talked to my oncologists' nurse about it and she said to check it everyday this week twice a day and keep a log of it and if it's still up at the beginning of next week, let them know. Then today, I still had a slight headache so after my radiation treatment today, I had the nurse check it and it was up to 141/104! She then checked both arms while I was sitting, standing, and laying down and all 6 times it averaged about 135/103. She paged my radiologist and talked to him for a few minutes and he didn't think it wasn't anything to be too concerned about yet, but just to be safe he issued for me to have an MRI. So about lunchtime today, I had an MRI done at the hospital there in Alexander City. They called me about 2PM and told me there was nothing abnormal about the MRI and everything seemed fine, just to keep monitoring my BP and see where it is first of the week. I'm not really worried about this yet, but I'm just not sure what could be raising it. I've never had high BP, even during my recovery time from surgery or any of the other meds I've been on. Hopefully it will go down on its own this weekend and it will be nothing to worry about.