Is It May Already??

Pam is at the movies with her sister tonight so I thought I would clean the house. Procrastinator that I am, I also figured that I should update the blog too ;-)

I can't believe that the last update was last year already! But anyway I guess no updates mean no bad news, so that's cool.

We actually had a bit of good news again with Pam's latest brain scan. Although we were worried, it turns out that the brain lesions are either the same or have shrunk again since the last scan, and that's great!

I guess we should also update readers on our mainly boring lives... we've mainly just been working, but we have had a couple of nice breaks lately too. In the winter we went to Gimli to stay at the hotel there, just for the weekend. It was very relaxing, we went for a walk, read our books, soaked in the hot tub, watched the Olympics, ate in the restaurant and were generally slothful. It was fantastic!

More recently we went on a quick trip to the west coast. We stayed for two nights in Vancouver with Pam's brother and sister-in-law and had a good time with them. I hung out with my old chum Rick and that was great as well. Then our friend Bryan very kindly drove us to Tacoma, Washington where we picked up our new old car. (I had sold the '72 Datsun 240Z I had owned for 20 years because I wanted to try something different).

In Tacoma we picked up the car, and over the next three days drove it back 1600-odd miles across Washington, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota. The car ran great and the weather was perfect, it was a nice break for us (not to mention exciting for me to drive a longtime "dream car" of mine through the mountains, with my lovely wife there to enjoy it with me). We got back to Winnipeg about 7pm on Wednesday, April 21, and took the next day off work.

Now we're back to work... I hope that Powerball ticket we bought in Washington paid off, but I don't have the heart to check the numbers ;-)

Farewell to 2009

Being as it's the last day of the year, I thought I would post a few thoughts here.

2009 was a bit of a strange year for us. It started off great, with Pam and me celebrating a milestone birthday with a fantastic trip to Europe. Both Pam and her "other family" in Spain were thrilled to be reunited after a long time apart and I also really enjoyed seeing Iratxe again and meeting the rest of her lovely family. We had such a great time in Spain and the UK, it was really a dream vacation.

After that, of course, things went a bit sideways (which is of course the reason for this blog in the first place). You can read all about everything that's happened in the previous posts, so there is no need to go through it all again here ;-)

Anyway, we are very glad to have had some good news recently, and we are thankful for how things are going, and that Pam is feeling mostly better. We know that this thing will always be with us, but we also are grateful for the support, good wishes, thoughts and prayers of all of our friends and family (that's you, readers!) All of your positive waves that you have sent our way have really helped us.


Wishing you all the best of health and happiness for the New Year,

Dallas and Pam

Some Good News!

Today we had some good news, the results from a brain MRI Pam had last week.

The MRI showed that many of the brain lesions have disappeared, and the few that are left have shrunk!

We are really happy about this. Dr. B. has also suggested that Pam start on Tamoxifen so she will be doing that in the next day or so. It is a pill that is intended to help keep the lung tumours from growing, and is well-tolerated by most people.

We also want to say thanks to everyone for your good thoughts as they appear to be working!

Love, P+D

OK, now we get it!

Dallas here...

So we had the appointment with the oncologist, Dr. B., on Monday.

The short version is that the meeting went well and now we understand the reasons why things have been going as they have been.

Basically Dr. B. explained that there are a finite amount of treatment options, and each treatment may only work for a limited time before it stops working. Since the scans have confirmed that Pam's lung cancer has not been advancing and hasn't been causing symptoms, Dr. B. didn't want to "waste" one of these finite treatment options when it isn't really needed. His advise is to keep all therapies in reserve for when the cancer starts to advance.

His analogy was soldiers in a bunker, surrounded by the enemy, with only a limited supply of ammunition and no chance of resupply. The soldiers would be best off saving their ammo for when the enemy attacks. If the enemy is staying behind cover and not attacking, there's no point wasting ammo shooting at them, when that ammo cannot be replaced.

We think this makes a good deal of sense. Dr. B. assured us that if/when the cancer starts to advance he will treat it every way he can. Pam will have regular scans every 8-10 weeks or so to monitor the situation, and more frequently if symptoms present.

If this had been explained to us earlier it would have saved us alot of anxiety about why treatment had not started. However I think we are all on the same page now and we feel quite a bit better about the whole thing. Next brain scan should be later this month.

Micro-update

Dallas here...

Pam had her scans done a week ago last Wednesday and the results were in on Friday.

Basically the abdomen scan was clear and the upper chest scan showed no changes to the lungs, which we will take as being good. Presumably now the doctor will begin some treatment on the lungs, we're expecting an appointment soon for that.

This weekend we met some friends at the Corn Maze. It was fun but sure got cold towards the end of the day! Of course the "petting zoo" component is always great, there's nothing to match fuzzy lambs and kittens for cuteness!

Progress

I guess our "assertiveness" with the doc last week has brought some results. Pam has a CT scan scheduled for next Wednesday.

We hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving.

Love D. and P.

Update?

Saw the oncologist today, "Dr. B."

Had anticipated that treatment of some kind would be starting, that was the indication from the radiation oncologist last week, anyway. Either Tamoxifen or chemotherapy, probably Tamoxifen to start and see how that goes.

That's not quite what happened, though. Basically Dr. B. wants to do another scan of the chest before starting the therapy. He seemed to think that this would happen sometime in December... but when we objected to this timeframe (!) he agreed to have it done sooner, like in the next two weeks it seems. Dr. B. did say that Pam was looking very well though.

We're getting a little frustrated with the process. However we are looking forward to the next scan in a short while and starting a treatment.

Love, P.