A new year :)

Happy New Year!

I know a lot of you have been waiting on an update... I think we have all been trying to figure out the best way to communicate the overwhelming lack of information. The good news is there is no bad news - so, that's a start :)

Dad finished up his second round of chemo then had a PET scan to see if this chemo was working. Esophageal cancer is typically treated with a chemo cocktail called EOX. Remember when we found out that the weird thing on the lung was lung cancer (that was fun...)? Well, we also found out that the results of the DNA testing meant to assess his tumor's resistance to certain chemos determined that EOX would likely not work for dad's stubborn bastard tumor. So, the think tank decided to go with something different. We took a "calculated risk" and decided to try a less conventional chemo mix in the hopes that this one would do the trick.

Dr. Ko (UCSF GI Oncologist) was only comfortable with this approach if we agreed to do 2 rounds, then a PET. If the PET didn't show the results we wanted then he'd do 2 rounds of EOX before surgery. The DNA testing to show a tumor's resistance is still very new so Dr. Ko isn't completely sold on relying on this test 100%. He relies on the data and the tests and the fact that EOX usually works.

So the PET -- looks like this chemo is working on the lung (which we really weren't too concerned with anyway since the surgeon could take out that entire chunk during the esophagus surgery). The esophageal tumor, however, shows no signs of improvement. Same size, no metabolic activity change. It's hard not to see this is disappointing, but Dr. Jablons (UCSF Surgeon) made a really good point: "You have to stop the freight train before you can back it up." So no news is actually good news? It could have been bigger or more active. No reaction is actually a sign of the cancer responding to this treatment.

We're still sort of in a holding pattern because Dr. Javeed (primary oncologist in Folsom) and Dr. Jablons are leaning toward doing the surgery right away. The rationale for this being that if the chemo isn't taking care of the cancer then getting it out is the best way to ensure we don't waste another minute.

Dr. Ko is on vacation so we'd like to chat with him before deciding on surgery now or not. Since dad is handling the chemo so well he decided to do another round of this one while we wait for Ko to come back and make his recommendation.

So it looks like surgery won't happen until early February at the soonest. We will be sure to update everyone as soon as we talk to Dr. Ko - he's our favorite and the most likely to give us some nice pearls of wisdom and hope :)

Love you all -- extremely grateful for the support and prayers!

xoxo,

~kyle