Monday, January 21, 2008

backtracking a little

Just went back and saw that I didn't blog since before Xmas. We had a very nice visit with the kids. Brett & Arielle stayed for about 2 weeks. Julie was here for a few weeks - minus a few days that she went back to St Louis for New Years. We did our normal tapas-style Xmas Eve. It was fun with Arielle here since this was her first Xmas. Everyone had a great time opening presents. For Xmas day, we prepared a turkey dinner - much of it from a pre-packaged dinner from The Fresh Market. Turkey, dressing, cranberry salad, rolls, corn souffle, Jill's double-baked potatoes. Great meal.

We had our New Year's Eve soup party. We had four other couples - meaning we had five kinds of soup. Great night for me! After soup and lots of conversation, we played Balderdash. It was a fun game and turned out that we had just about the right number of players to work well.

Brett & Arielle went back to Philly after New Years and Julie came back for another week or so. Finally, by mid-January, we had the house back. It is certainly very nice to have the kids visit - but, it is also nice to have the house to ourselves again. We have certainly become accustomed to being empty-nesters.

Brett is now done with school. He finished strong on Dean's List the last two semesters. Now...I am not sure what he will end up doing. Obviously, I would hope that he will have luck finding some kind of job that he likes. Julie is next - she finishes in May.

nothing new

Well...it seems that I am currently in that stage that just requires "wait & see". There is currently nothing new re: my status or treatment. My last x-ray was Jan 2 and Dr Einhorn indicated that the x-ray indicates that I am continuing to do well. I will continue to get the Avastin infusion every 3 weeks. But...Dr Einhorn thinks that every 6 weeks is now enough for the x-rays and blood tests. I am not experiencing many side-effects from the Avastin. Bleeding can be an issue and the thin tissue inside my nose if pretty much never fully healed - nose-bleeding is a standard thing for me right now. Blood pressure is running pretty normal.

I will continue on this track until around late April or early May. Apparently, I can only get the Avastin for one year. After one year, my status will be evaluated and Dr Einhorn will decide where to go from there. If I am still in remission, it is likely that he will move to one of the other options similar to Avastin to control things. At a point when it appears that the cancer could be becoming active again, he currently thinks that we might actually be able to reconsider further rounds of chemo. This is not done in many cases; but, he feels that my body seemed to react well and it might be worth another try.

I still have some of the peripheral neuropathy (dullness/pain) in my feet - but, it is much less that a few months ago. Most of the time my feet just feel like they are asleep. It is a bit funky walking sometimes - but, is mostly not too much problem. Occasionally, I get a bit of pain in my feet. When that happens, I need to just stay off my feet and sit until it subsides.

We continue to travel - we leave for two weeks in the Caribbean on Feb 2. Jill's docs seem to think it is OK for her to continue planning cruises - so, we are planning something for the Spring. Looking at several options right now - Baltic capitals, Alaska, Scotland/Ireland, Italy. I guess we will need to decide pretty soon so we can get it booked and move on with the other plans.