27 May - Round One Tapering Off

Sarah feels much better today and has been up and about with a lot more energy and no nausea. Rainy here in Chicago so we're keeping indoors except for the kid's soccers and baseball. Had a baseball game out in the rain yesterday evening which was super muddy! The coaches agreed to end it after the 3rd inning.

25 May - Memorial Day

I tried to get a good Memorial Day Parade picture of the boys and me with the bribe, "let's do one real picture and then a silly one." Well, the kids still could only muster some very forced and constipated looking smiles for the "real" one... so here's the "silly" picture instead! Sam really went all-out with the 'ole classic Stretch Your Mouth And Stick Your Tongue Out - that's gotta hurt, right?
Sarah joined us after the parade to hang out at some Memorial Day cookouts and I think she had a great time (as did we all). Overall, I think she felt pretty good but chemo-fatigue caught up with her at around 7pm and she crashed hard on the couch.

24 May - Update

Ok, Sarah's definitely feeling the side effects now. Took a few days to kick in, but she's started to feel more fatigued and some loss of appetite and nausea. She has been sleeping-in and spending quite a bit of time on the couch cat-napping throughout the day. I took the kids to church today and I'll probably take the kids to the Memorial Day parade while Sarah gets some add'l rest in the morning. Only problem is that chemo fatigue doesn't really get better after sleep... she'll just have to wait it out. Sarah might get a red blood cell booster shot this coming week when she goes back to the doc for a check-up - that should help with the fatigue.

22 May - Chemo Update

Quick update: Sarah got her first dose of Carboplatin yesterday. So far, the side effects have been limited - knock on wood! She felt ok this morning and is up and about - just a bit more tired than usual. She's taking a good anti-nausea drug called Emend and it seems to be working.
Thank you to everyone for the many well-wishes!

19 May - Battle Lines Are Drawn Again: Sarah Back On Chemo

First a quick update on family stuff: Sarah and I got to attend her 20 year high school reunion in New Orleans while my parents come up to Chicago to stay with the boys. We had a great time at the very well attended reunion and enjoyed staying with Thomas and Kerry. Ben also started baseball and just had his first game this week - he really likes it and asks me to practice all the time. Sam's doing great at soccer as well - he's really going for the goal.

Unfortunately, we also have an update on Sarah's fight with cancer (just days after we celebrated her 3rd year of survival since diagnosis). They say wars are fought one battle at a time and we're starting a new battle: a PET scan now shows new tumors in and around her liver (two are around 2cm) and a smaller met in her lymph node near her neck (supraclavicular area). The tumors around her liver are probably the cause of her gall bladder attacks since it is likely that they are pressing on the outside of her bile duct, pinching it off periodically. That's also driving her liver enzyme measurements up and limits the choices of chemotherapy treatments for now. The fix for that is either using available chemo to shrink the tumors near the duct or putting a stint in the bile duct to force it open.
For now, Sarah will immediately begin a strong dose of the chemo drug Carboplatin together with the usual Herceptin (repeated every three weeks) and she'll get also get another ultrasound tomorrow to look more closely at the bile duct - that will determine whether a stint is needed.

It's been eight months since Sarah was on chemo - a welcome break that we were hoping would run much longer... But, it's time to fight again and Sarah knows what needs to be done. I think after the initial shock of the results she's ready to get on with it and "do something" about the new tumors. So, back to no-hair, back to nausea, back to roller-coaster blood counts. Anxiety about the future is front and center again, but the hope that balances it out is that another break will follow this new "battle" and we can shock the cancer back in to stability. For now, we'll take it one step at a time.