We have three types of news this week. The good news is that the oncologist said that Judy is not in immediate danger of dying, thus they have agreed on no additional chemo at this time, since she continues to feel better and better while off the chemo.
The intermediate news is that Judy is having more and more back pain, presumably from the cancer in her spine. Even though the cancer in her lymph nodes is not hormone responsive, the oncologist said that when it metastasizes to the bones it often is. So they have put her on monthly hormone injections on the outside chance that they can slow the cancer growth in the backbone a little. Unfortunately she got quite ill after the initial injections. We do not know whether the injections caused the illness, or if it was caused by something else ... like getting overly tired.
The bad news is that during the last two months (that Judy has been off chemo and feeling better and better) her cancer marker has more than doubled. The presumption that we are making is, that while her general health is getting better and better, her cancer tumors are also getting bigger and bigger.
At this point we are assuming that she probably has less than a year left. However, our focus is going to be on helping her feel as well as she can for as long as she can vs extending her life at the expense of feeling poorly all of the way to the end.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment