Chemo Starts this week!

Hi... its Whitney and I am now officially a blogger! :)

The appointment tonight went well... we got a little ancy waiting around (Dr. Javeed was almost an hour late), but we got the answers we were looking for. The doc said he has been busy on the phone and has had 2 of the 4 other docs weigh in, and these 3 (including Javeed) have decided that a different chemo cocktail than what they typicaly use would be best based on the genetic testing showing resistance to the typical EOX cocktail. We are going with Taxotere (sp?) and CPT11 for 2 cycles, doing another PET scan seeing how the tumor is responding to this mix, and then decide from there if we continue with this new cocktail or switch to EOX. The good thing about this new cocktail is that it doesn't have some of the really crappy side effects that EOX had that my dad was really not looking forward to (like not being able to drink, eat, or touch anything colder than room temperature for 5 days after the infusion.) All of the side effects with this Taxotere and CPT11 are less crappy, but typical of most chemo drugs(read: pretty awful, but no temperature issues.)

We will meet with Mindy the chemo nurse tomorrow morning (we are going to do our best to make sure Tommy Boy is all of the nurses favorite (which of course he will be!) so he gets the Lazy Boy Recliner he wants in the corner... comedy!) to get steroids he will need to take prior to starting chemo on Thursday. (Fingers crossed there will be no "roid-rage" assciated with these steroids-- haha) So yay... chemo on Thursday! My dad is stoked to get the ball, that has been in a holding pattern, ROLLING!

So here is what the next few months look like:
Thursday, Nov 5th = Week 1, Day 1... 2 hour infusion (also better than the 6-8 hours for the EOX mix)
11/12 = Week 2, Day 8... 2 hour infusion
11/19 = Week 3, OFF (this completes cycle 1)
Repeat above starting 11/25 for Cycle 2 and then have a PET scan done after Week 5 to see how the tumor is responding. Then one more cycle... then wait 4 weeks for T-Bird to regain his strength for surgery, and then we are looking at surgery in late January, early February.

That's the latest... and for those of you that have never met me, or have never received and email from me-- you'll have to get used to the fact that I am just really not any good at being concise. Sorry for this lengthiness!

And thanks to everyone for all of the positive mojo and prayers... we cannot tell you how much it means to us and how much it helps knowing we have you on our side!