Nearing End of Cycle 1

Sorry it's been so long since we've given everyone an update, but that means nothing bad has happened!! No news is good news for us! But we are nearing the end of the first cycle of treatment and I know many of you are curious as to my status and what's next. I've had 7 treatments as of right now, all of them given once a week on wednesdays. They do blood work every time before they even let me begin chemotherapy and so far, my blood counts have been good. My platelets and white blood count have been lower than the average person, but for someone going through chemo, they've been relatively good. My infection fighting cells have also been good! The only thing that appears to be affected is my cholesterol. One of the chemo meds they give me is prone to raising cholesterol and it has increased mine, but not dangerously high. They have put me on Tricor to help maintain it and it appears to be working.

This wednesday (Nov. 10) will be treatment #8 and will be the last one of the first cycle. I will then go back Thursday (Nov. 11) for my CT scan. I will then return home to Auburn for the weekend. The following Tuesday, Jason will fly with me back to Houston for my doctor's appointment Wednesday, Nov. 17. That wednesday, we will meet with my doctor and find out the results of the CT scan to see if the treatment is working. They consider it to be effective if there is less than 20% growth/spreading of the cancer. If they find it to be working, I will start the second cycle of 8 week treatments that afternoon (i.e. they have already scheduled me to start up the next cycle right after we get the results as if the treatment is working - they're being optimistic!!). I will go through 8 more treatments, after which they'll scan me again and reevaluate and so forth.

Please pray for excellent results, and also for traveling grace as we travel back and forth! We will let everyone know how everything turns out next week!