Thursday, April 25, 2013

3-Month Update

As many of you know we found out that Kay's ovarian cancer seemed to be recurring at her follow up visits after finishing her surgery-chemo-radiation therapy regimen last year, and she had her 3-month follow up visit with Dr. McCroskey last Thursday.  The news is decidedly mixed.  The good news is that Kay continues to feel well and life is good.  Some of her local friends threw her a party for her 59th birthday and they went to a ceramics painting place and painted a set of marine-theme plates.  We also had a family party in Seattle and she had a sleep-over with Jean and Brett at Jean's place. The medical news is just OK.  Her tumor marker, the CA-125 continues to rise, from 30 about 3 months ago, to 72 now.  This unfortunately confirms that her cancer is growing, but not terribly rapidly.  She is going to get a CT scan soon to look for any measurable bulk of tumor, but the plan for now is to carry on, live our lives and recheck the tests in 3 months again.  This will give her another period of time without chemo and the attendent side-effects.
At that time there is a good chance she will need to go on treatment to keep the cancer from spreading, and there are some not-too-intolerably-difficult options.  Most likely is seeing if an oral PARP inhibitor prevents works.  Other options may include a tumor-immunization trial being done at the University of Pennsylvania. We will learn more about the options as the time for treatment approaches.  For now it's time to live as normally as possible and cherish time off treatment.
This is all pretty much in the mid-range of our expectations, not great news, but not a big setback either.  We are committed to living fully and normally

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