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

Back to Chemo

Yesterday, I got to go with mom and dad to mom's second appointment with Dr. Dickson. She has been on a hormone therapy pill and off of chemo for about two months now. The doctor did a CT scan, and could tell that the cancer was already growing again. Mom wasn't too suprised since she was starting to feel worse the last few weeks. However, we were all a little suprised and upset that the pill didn't work longer.

The doctor told us a few different Chemo options as far as which medicines to take. Initially the doctor wanted to put her on the same chemo she had before, but mom was a little hesitant because of what she had read about her previous medications. One of the drugs is quite controverial. So after an hour of weighing the pro's and con's we all felt good about Taxotere and Adriamyacin. It is given every 3 weeks, but he said it is a lot more potent than she is used to, so it could make her quite a bit more sick.

Mom was so excited that her hair was growing in again, it broke my heart to think of her losing her hair again. It also killed me to think of her being so sick again, but as I tried to hold back the tears in the doctors office, mom didn't show one sign of feeling sorry for herself. She remains hopeful and amazingly positive, and puts a lot of trust in the Lord. We have had a lot of great blessings with how mom responded to the chemo, and we hope that she has the same results with this next round of chemo. Thanks for all the prayers and support!

A new Doctor

So this is Angie and a while ago after a lot of thought my parents decided to switch doctors and go to Dr. Dixon in Rexburg. He is a great doctor, used to work at Huntsmans in Salt Lake and was really great to mom. He took a long time with them and asked them all about their life and discussed the cancer. We really feel good about the switch, he is really aggressive and gives us much more hope. He did another cat scan last week, and we should get the results today to see if she needs to go back on chemo or not. Thanks to everyone for being such a great support to mom!

No more Chemo...for now!

Mom had her CT scan last week and yesterday we went for her weekly chemo. We met with the nurse practicioner and she said that mom's cat scan looked really good. Her largest liver tumor went from 6 cm to 3 cm. Some of the lymphnode tumors shrunk 75%Initially, they mentioned that a 50% response would be wonderful, and that is what she got. Because of this great response, they decided to put her on an oral pill. This pill stops all of the estrogen in her body, so that the estrogen won't feed the tumors. The original plan was to do 4 rounds, but she responded so well they thought that 3 was enough. She will still go once a month to get a chemo drug for her bones, they say it's like Boniva. This shouldn't make her as sick and her hair should be able to grow back. Also when she goes once a month they will check her tumor markers to make sure that the pill is doing it's job.

The pill is called arimidex. The nurse explained that at some point the cancer will become resistant to the medication. She said the average time for this to happen is usually 8 to 15 months. She reminded us that this is just an average and it is different for everyone, it could work as long as 2 years. If or when this happens, they will decide from there what the next step will be. There are 12 different chemo regimens for her kind of cancer. If she stops responding, the social worker mentioned that there are options such as clinical trials in Texas and back east.

The nurse warned us that one of the side effects of this pill is mood swings. As hard as it is for me to imagine mom being real moody, I am the one that is with her every day so start praying for me too. Just Kidding! We are so grateful for this response that mom has had to the chemo, and glad that now she can start feeling a little better. Now we just need to pray that she will respond well to the pill and that it will keep her tumors small for as long as possible. She is a happy lady, and you would never know the battle she is fighting when talking to her. She is trying to stay positive and has amazing trust in the Lord! We love you mom!

Tumor Marker Results!

This is Hailey...I am the lucky one who accompanied mom to chemotherapy today. We got the results back on her tumor marker tests and they were at a 57 with the normal range being 0-31, and a 52 with normal range being 0-31! She is almost NORMAL! I know these numbers don't mean a whole lot, but to put things in perspective at the beginning her numbers were 166 and 171. Last month they were 96 and 94. So they have gone down dramatically. The doctor was very pleased and said that she is responding really well.

Mom is experiencing some not so pleasant side effects from one of the chemo drugs called Evastin. The doctor said today that they would probably quit giving her evastin for now, because one of their objectives is to make the quality of life better. After talking with mom we both agreed that it would be better to go through a little suffering with the side effects if it meant that it would increase her survivability. So we will have to address that with the doctor next time.

Today she did her 2nd week of chemo in her 3rd round (each round is 3 weeks). Dr. Francisco said that after she finished this round (in two weeks) he wants her to get a CT scan. This will make it easier for them to tell exactly how well the tumors have responded and if they have partial shrinkage or complete shrinkage. Depending on what they see on that test, there is a possibility that she would just go on the hormone therapy pill and only get one chemo drug once a month that helps with bone strength. If that was the case, then her hair should start growing back! The hormone pill is what stops the estrogen from feeding the tumors and will hopefully keep the tumors small for a LONG time!

We are happy with those results and hope that this next round brings her tumor markers to normal range. We couldn't be happier with how mom is responding, it is definitely an answer to our prayers. Thanks for all your comments, mom loved reading them!

Anti-Cancer

This is Angie and this past weekend I had the chance to fly to California to be with my mom as she and her siblings went through their parents home. We had a great time there with the Kimballs and on Sunday mom and I started the 14 hour drive home in a 16 foot budget truck, we were quite the pair! As we started our drive we had a good cry (seems to be more frequent these days) when we talked about some less than promising statistics she had ran into, even though Mom is so positive the internet can be a scary place. The next day on our drive we started reading out loud to each other from "Anti-Cancer, a new way of life" by David Servan-Schreiber. It was such a great book, everything was so interesting and made a lot of sense. He described cancer-prone personalities (which fit mom to a t) and gave lots of research to back up all of his claims. He went on to suggest a lot of lifestyle changes that have proven to significantly contribute to the fight with cancer. Among other things Mom is going to be trying to cut out white flour and sugar from her diet, consume organic foods, medidate, and exercise daily. She even says she wants to try to do the 5K when some of the Wahlen women do their Salt Lake City Half Marathon in April. She says she's going to wear a t-shirt that says "I'm fighting the war in My Rack." Still the same joker! It was so encouraging and we both felt so positive and I think Mom feels a renewed sense of hope. I'm so grateful for the chance I had to spend some personal time with my mom, where I was once again reminded of what an amazing women she is and how much we need her in our lives. Hopefully she'll be living "Anti-Cancer" for MANY, MANY years to come!