Friday, 29 July 05
My latest MRI has been reviewed as clean! This makes 10 clean scans during the past 18 months. CBC results are also great. I am thankful for all of the prayers and for one more day to praise His name. The 11th round of chemo begins on Monday, 01 August 05.
Wednesday, 20 July 05
A kickoff for the Light the Night blood cancer awareness and fundraising walk was held at EFW today. The walk itself is scheduled for Sunday, 16 October 05 at Sundance Square in Ft. Worth.
I am a participant in this year's walk, as I was last year. Please consider making a secure online donation on my behalf to fund research to accelerate a cure for blood cancers - and indeed all cancers.
Monday, 18 July 05
Completed two more weeks on Temodar and Accutane yesterday. Continuing the Keppra @ 1000 mg/day, which can make me a bit sleepy, but considering the benefit (prevention of seizures), a few more yawns in the morning is a small price to pay. Next MRI will be Wednesday, 27 July 05.
Sunday, 10 July 05
We returned home today from Canyon Lake, where we had enjoyed a couple of days on the lake in a ski boat. The boat canopy greatly reduced our exposure to the sun and made the event much more enjoyable. Perhaps the best parts of the trip were the great wipe outs experienced by nearly everyone in the family while riding an inter tube. We took turns being pulled at about 30 miles per hour around the lake riding this donut, and as the boat turned, the tendency of the tube was to skate across the boat wake, thereby tracing an arc on the outside circle of the boat’s turn. If you transitioned fast enough from the relative calm of the boat wake to the rougher waves to the left or right areas outside of the wake, the tube would flip over and plunge you into the water. I had my Pray for Palmer wrist band stripped off of my right arm during one of these crashes. Fortunately Aimee found the band floating in the water before I even noticed that it was missing. Two fingers on my right hand were jammed as well. One of our boys actually had his swim suit pulled off when he hit the water! Fortunately he was doubled layered.
Saturday, 02 July 05
Kathy and I began to put two and two together today, and I now realize that the seizure I sustained on 23 June 05 was not the first one. In fact just two days after returning home from surgery, my tongue went numb for a brief period of time, followed by my chin. We retraced my steps over the past 17 months or so, and have concluded that I have had several seizures in a variety of forms. The fact that all of these seizures have been surrounded by clean MRIs, over a 17 month period leads us to conclude that the seizures are a result of the trama experienced by my brain during surgery - upset neurons - rather than a recurrent tumor.
Friday, 01 July 05
Accomplished my monthly oncologist's appointment today, at which time I received the radiologist's written report that post-op MRI scan #9 is clean. We had performed this scan within four hours of a seizure that I had experienced on 23 June 05 and I had a verbal that everything looked good, but it is always good to see this in writting. Dr. Stark-Vance, Kathy and I spoke at length about several topics during our meeting. I asked about resuming Celebrex. I had stopped this med a couple of months ago due to repeated warnings in the media about adverse effects on the cardiovascular system. The Doctor said that halting Celebrex probably had nothing to do with the seizure I had last week, and there was no reason to resume Celebrex.
Given the seizure I had last week, I asked Dr. Stark-Vance if I should refrain from driving an automobile. "Yes" she quickly replied, "for a period of six months." There is evidently a law on the books to this effect. Just as well, as I do not want to be tooling down the highway, have a seizure and potentially cause a serious accident! Assuming no more seizures are sustained (I am taking 1000 mg of Keppra anticonvulsant daily), I will resume driving activities a day or two before Christmas.
Another conversation today concerned the protocol of CPT-11 and Avastin, which seems to be producing favorable results in the war against brain tumors. There are patients who are tolerating CPT-11 very well, and the efficacy of these two agents used together looks promising.
No CBC blood work was done today, as all of my prior CBC results have been great. My next round of chemo will be a short one - about half as long as the previous 9 cycles because MRI #10 will be performed on 27 July 05. We normally wait 60 days between scans, but given the seizure from last week, we would like to verify that all's well in 30 days.
