1/31/2012

A Message from Jetty!

Hi All,

Billy does such a great job of keeping an anxious family in the know while our Kenan is undergoing treatments. Thank you Billy!

Thank goodness for text messages! Billy sent me the sweetest picture text today and I wanted to share with everyone.


Thank you for all the prayers. Keep them coming, they are working!


Sue


The note says, "Good Luck today MOM. Love You"


PS. Don't worry, I'm behaving!




1/30/2012

Treatment #5 in the morning

First, we want to thank everybody who has donated money, hotel points and airline miles to help us with our travel costs. It has been SO nice to come up here every month and not worry about the expenses. Also, thank you to everybody who has taken us to the airport and watched our dog, Jetty! You are helping me get the best treatment possible!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

We met with Dr. Sato today and he gave us the scan results. The subcutaneous spot on my chest has grown slightly but you still cannot feel it through the skin. I have a new subcutaneous lesion on my bellybutton that is also very small, and he does not believe he can feel that one either. The subcutaneous lesions are not ideal but I am thankful they are located below the skin and not on a vital organ! One of the lesions on my liver has grown about 1cm and that is what we want to attack at full force. I will have my 5th round of immunoembolization tomorrow. Dr. Gonsalves (my interventional radiologist) will go after this spot in particular and try to cut off any blood supply to this lesion. The good news is that all of the other spots on my liver have shrunk or remain stable!

Dr. Sato is also prescribing me an anti seizure medication that has been shown to slow or halt the progression of ocular melanoma and, needless to say, I am very excited to try it! I will have another round of immuno next month to treat the other "half" of my liver. (My liver anatomy is a little different than most since I had a resection). After that I will wait a month, get scanned again, and come back up here to figure out the next step.

We will check into the hospital around 6 am tomorrow morning! Night night!

1/25/2012

Black Out Night

On Saturday Billy and I drove to Aiken, SC to finally meet Meredith!  I have told many of  you about Meredith over the past few months and it was awesome to finally meet her in person!  Meredith is 24 years old and also battling metastatic ocular melanoma.  We both go to Philadelphia to see Dr. Sato and Dr. Gonsalves for treatment.

We have A LOT in common.  They say about 6 in 1 million people are diagnosed with ocular melanoma.  About 3 of those 6 people will have melanoma spread to another part of their body.  Unfortunately, we fall into that very small population. 

Get ready for the weird part...
We are among the youngest people to get diagnosed with this cancer. 
We were both originally diagnosed in 2009, within 2 months of each other. 
We both went to Hopewell High School. 
Our Dad's were fraternity brothers at UNC at the same time (Go Heels!)

The coincidences really make you wonder and our doctors are still shocked by all of the similarities!  I absolutely hate that the two of us are battling this terrible cancer but I am thankful that we have each other.  Meredith is the only person in the world who can understand what goes through my mind on a daily basis and she is a great support system! 


Meredith played basketball at USC-Aiken and every year they host a "Black Out Night" to honor her and to raise money and awareness for ocular melanoma.  I also got to meet another OM patient, Brian, who gets treated by my same doctor at Dook.  Brian was diagnosed in 2007 and thank the Lord he is cancer free to this day!  We are all left eye OM patients and it was cool to share stories and experiences with them.  




My next appointment with Dr. Sato and the team is scheduled for 1:30 pm on Monday.  I got my MRI and CT scans done in Charleston this past Monday and I sent them up to Dr. Sato to review.  These appointments are challenging because we don't know what to expect.  Billy and I try not to dwell on things and we live life as if everything is totally normal when we are at home...and we have a lot of FUN doing it! I continue to feel amazing and certainly nothing like a cancer patient.  I am confident that the news this time around will be just as good as it was last time.  I look forward to having a celebratory dinner with Billy on Monday night! 

1/04/2012

Round Four is Done

She is done with round four and looks like sleeping beauty. She should be off of bed rest by 4:30 pm.

Dr. Gonsalves reported good news that she couldnt see anything new. Unfortunately she can't tell from the procedure if anything has shrunk more. She is optimistic as we are for more good news with the next round of scans.

We will get to see Dr. Sato later today to talk about future plans.

Thank you to everyone sending thoughts and prayers...it means the world!

Early Morning Run

We ran to the hospital this morning. Woke up to 15 degree weather with single digit windchill...oh the memories of waiting at the bus stop in Chicago. Hope this is the last time to be up here for a while.

We're here checked in at the hospital waiting to go back. I'll let you know when she is out. We can't wait to cheer on the Tigers to victory (wish we were in Miami).