Some News

Wow - looking back at the blog I see that the last post was from May 2011 - over three years ago!

Quite a bit has happened since then...

Some trips...

Europe 2012 - Tubingen, Germany

Trier, Germany

Burg Eltz, Germany

Vimy Ridge Memorial

Moreuil Wood Memorial, France

You-know-what in Paris

Anniversary drink in Montreal, September 2012

Is that a person riding a tiny unicycle in the background?!?

  

Montreal, 2012

Elkhorn Resort with Curt and Sarah, Feb 2014

At the Elkhorn with pals

Sold our house on Chestnut Street...

Bought a house on Churchill Drive...

Anyway, I wanted to post a little bit of an update on what's going on, since there have been some developments.

Some of you probably know that Pam has frequent blood tests to make sure that her treatments are doing what they should. The so-called "tumor markers" - CA 15-3 and CEA - are important indicators of this.

For the last few months the markers have been on the rise. This usually means that cancer is active somewhere, even if symptoms aren't evident. Pam's doctor has tried various things to see if they would help. Medicine was stopped, medicine was changed, but this didn't seem to stop the markers going up.

So the next step is chemotherapy. Fortunately, this chemo is done with pills at home. Pam has been taking a drug called Xeloda, three pills twice a day, two weeks on then one week off. There are some side effects but they seem pretty manageable for the most part. Again, there hasn't been any indication of active disease except the tumor markers going up, and Pam has been feeling pretty good lately, if a bit tired. She's through the first course and on her "week off". So we are hopeful that the Xeloda will do its job.

There are eight refills so that means the full course is 24 weeks - 16 weeks taking pills with eight "weeks off" interspersed.

We'll update as we get more news. Hope you all are having a great summer!