cancer hell redux

It's always hardest to share the bad news, and bad news it is. My scans of the 19th show progression in both the pelvic and rib tumors. Given this growth, I am no longer on the Gemzar the drug that has worked for me for all these months.

This past week I have met with two surgeons at UCSF, an abdominal surgeon and the thoracic surgeon and the Dr. Jahan the medical oncologist. It's not so clear cut what my next step should be. There're some chemo drugs that I can consider and there's surgery. The two surgeons both said that surgery is "feasible" but had some concerns about the disease coming back while recovering from surgery, precluding me from doing a systemic treatment while recovering. That is one perspective. As difficult as surgery is and the fact that we don't know what may or may not crop up, it's near 100% it will get the disease out of my pelvis and abdomen. The plan is that after I recover from the pelvic surgery I would have the surgery to get the rib tumor out. After all that, then , IF NECESSARY, after recovery we can kick in with a chemo therapy. Best case scenario, I get the large pelvic tumor out (including a small tumor near my liver and checking out a suspicious growth in my right kidney) and get the rib tumor out then I will NED for a long time. Worst case scenario..... I don't really want to go there.

Given that chemo therapies response rates are far from stellar for LMS, surgery seems like the best option.

On top of all this, since Friday I have had severe gasto-intestinal pain. I am not sure if it's cancer related or a bout of gut flair up due to other factors, ouch.

Here comes the good news...On Friday morning Berkwood-Hedge had a walkathon for LMS research and they raised over $3000! I was so honored! I had a blast walking with the kids and staff. The kids were so proud that they could help raise money and excitedly shared with me how much they had pledged. It was a really fun morning.

That's all for now.

Becca