Well, the exciting news we were going to share with everyone is that Kathie's CEA level went from 250 to 25 - we thought, "ooh, miracle - the liver is going to be free and clear," but we were mistaken....
Apparently, the CEA can be a flaky indicator of how things are going. Sometimes it's awesome, other times it's a double agent, getting your hopes up.
So here's the real news, and I couldn't think of any ways to make this funny:
The chemo has done nothing. The larger tumors have simply gotten larger and some new small ones have appeared. To top it off, as my friend Kristen said, our whole family has to be unique - the doctors believe Kathie falls into a group of only 10% that doesn't metabolize camposar - an ingredient in the FOLFIRI cocktail, which would explain her severe diarrhea. Kathie has to be off chemo for at least 2 weeks (or until the FOLFIRI is pretty much out of her system) before they will begin FOLFOX (we will be continuing with the Avastin alongside of that). It will be around January if we know if that one is working.
God of course gave a silver lining - and that is that somehow and for some reason they had this appointment at MD Anderson. As you may all recall, she's only been getting chemo for about a month, so they typically wouldn't have seen her yet - thank God they did, we have lost very little ground in the scheme of things.
Everyone flys into Orlando tomorrow. Lauren told Kathie that if she isn't feeling well, they can lay beach towels out on the hotel beds and have pretend fun:) Either way, it will be wonderful to have the whole family together.
Posted by Lauren
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