A few weeks ago mom started noticing some major bloating in her stomach. After talking to the doctor and having to go to the hospital to get an ultrasound, it was determined that she has stomach ascites. This is caused by the liver not functioning properly. She had to get 2 liters of fluid drained out of her stomach. Her recent cat scan also showed cancer cells in the abdomen area. This meant that the cancer is progressing and has gotten immune to the chemotherapy she was on.

Mom met with the doctor on Monday. He was disappointed with what was going on just like we were, but he gave us some hope. He put her on some different drugs called adriamycin and cytoxin. She has had the adriamycin before and it worked really well, but it made her extremely sick and in pain for 2 weeks. We are hoping that this time won't be quite as bad, but I am sure she will still be quite sick. The doctor told mom that without treatment she would have 3 months to live. We are hoping and praying that this treatment can do the trick and turn things around. Mom is still positive and hopeful and has a lot of faith that things will work out how they are supposed to. Pray that this chemo will work and possibly even put her in remission, we aren't giving up. We love you mom!

Cat Scan Results

Last week, we got cat scan results back and Mom's liver had shrunk by 25-30% which is great! The doctor said she is continuing to respond to chemo really well and so we'll just stay on that path for now. Mom is continuing with chemo and has been doing pretty well. She gets tired at times but mostly lives a pretty full and normal life. She and Hailey are staying pretty busy taking care of Whitney. In a couple of weeks on April 17th some family members and friends are running in the Salt Lake City Half Marathon to raise money for cancer research through the Huntsman Hometown Heroes Program so we are really looking forward to that! Thanks to everyone for your continued support and prayers!

Angie

The Journey of Cancer

This is Angie and as you can see from the last post, Mom had to start chemo again. The Tuesday before Christmas she had treatment of a new combination that is supposed to be really strong, so strong that your body can only handle 6 rounds of it in a lifetime. Mom had a really rough Christmas and was in a lot of pain, it was of course difficult to see her like that. After seeing how horrible she was feeling we were looking at different options, one of which was Dr. James Forsythe in Reno who is a board certified oncologist and also a board certified homeopathic doctor. Tanner mentioned him in our phone call and Christmas day and then we coincidentally ran into some more information about what he does the next day. He appeared to have documented success, so we started to pray about that. Mom was very sick for about 2 weeks, and started to feel better the last 4 or 5 days before her appointment. Last Tuesday, we went to see Dr. Dickson in Rexburg, and Hailey and I came along with Mom and Dad and I was so glad we did. Dr. Dickson felt genuine concern for Mom's situation and how she had reacted to the treatment. He spent a long time with us answering all our questions and said he was certain that Mom had some good years of quality life ahead and that was great for us to hear after seeing her so sick and getting a little down. When we asked him about Dr. Forsythe, he was very open to that but was hesitant to try something like that right now while the treatments we are doing are working well and we are in a situation where we need to turn things around. We all felt really good about that and felt like Dr. Dickson really understood where we are coming from. Mom got a low dose treatment yesterday and will get another one next week with one week off so she can feel good while we have both Tanner and Garrett home and are enjoying some family time. After Garrett leaves they will continue with the combination of drugs she got before Christmas but at a lower dose so she won't be as sick. The only discouraging thing about the appointment was that since Mom didn't appear to respond well to the oral pill, low dose chemo might be something she will see a lot of during her life and might not get much of a break from. However, on the morning Tanner got home, we got great news from Dr. Dickson that her tumor markers had gone down dramatically, almost an unheard of amount from only one treatment so all that pain did something good, thank heavens! Thank you for everyone's thoughts and prayers, please feel free to comment. Mom loves to read them.

Angie