Shad, Trevor and I went for a walk down to the little store and McDonald's for some lunch yesterday. We knew that Shad's pump would last about an hour without being charged up, so it wasn't too long of a trip. Shad is moving much quicker now, but it still takes us about 10 - 15 minutes to make it downstairs. When we got back Dr. Pene was standing at the front desk. He greeted Shad with "Ahhh, there is the boy from the empty room" which Shad seemed to think was pretty funny. He let us know that he didn't need to tell us much, but did want to let us know what the AFP (alpha fetoprotein) was. Remember this was a huge indicator as to what type of cancer Shad had, and started out over 60,000. After the first round they were down to 20,000. I think there was another number given to us after the second round, but I guess I didn't write it down. Now, after the 3rd round it is down to 42! Remember, if it gets to 0 that means the cancer is gone. Needless to say we are quite happy that he is doing so well. We are very excited to see what it gets to after this fourth round of chemo.
Last time we were in for a check up it was kind of red around Shad's catheter. Dr. Pene was a little worried, especially since the catheter has been in for a little more than 2 months, and usually needs to be changed every couple months. He called Dr. Christman (pronounced chrissman) from the urology team to come down and take a look. He got down there pretty quickly, and said that it looked fine. The redness was normal, and not something to worry about. He told us what kinds of things to watch for that would tell us there was a problem. He then asked Dr. Pene when they were going to be doing more scans to check for progress, he was trying to figure out if they would need to put in a new catheter, or if they would be able to take it out before that time came. Dr. Pene told him that they would be doing some after round 4 of chemo. We thought he was going to wait until after round 8, so this was a surprise for us, but we were happy we would be getting a better handle on his progress that much sooner.
Anyway, back to yesterday. After Dr. Pene told us the good news I asked him when he was planning on doing more scans, and what that would mean. He said that they will do them in about 3 weeks once Shad has recovered fully from this round of chemo. He said they will also check the AFP at that point and if it is at zero that will mean the cancer is gone, (they will still do the scans to be sure) and they will stop treatments. If not, they will look at the scans and see if what is remaining is something that can be taken care of with surgery. If it doesn't seem like surgery will be able to fully take care of it, or surgery is not the best option. They will do two more rounds of chemo and then repeat the scans and everything again. This was very good news, and also a surprise for us. Originally Dr. Pene told us they were going to do 12 rounds of chemo, so even the thought of being done after 4 or 6 is amazing!
Thank you again for all the prayers, don't stop now!!
No comments:
Post a Comment