Not The Cells We’ve Been Looking For

My cancer’s area isn’t growing, but it’s showing more active blood cells

Hi folks.

While I enjoy sharing better news, today’s MRI results aren’t super. While it’s good that the cancer isn’t expanding beyond the original tumor area, there are more cancer cells growing versus simply being scar tissue. Once again this shows us my current chemo medicine (Lomustine) isn’t as effective for me as we had hoped. So next week I’ll begin using a different chemo, called Regorafenib. Despite a few more symptoms, it may be more likely to hold back the cancer, we’ll see.

To date my symptoms have been pretty light aside from aphasia causing some words to be slow to recall. The other day I saw a hummingbird and wanted to tell Kali, but I couldn’t recall the word “hummingbird”. Even recalling the name of some special people requires extra work for me — not ideal, but doable with practice. If I call you “dude” or “dudette” still know I care about you 🙂

And thankfully we’ve got plenty of other good news: Friday is Sidney and Calvin’s last day of school and they’re excited to have 10 weeks of play time (Kali got us a Nintendo Switch — many video games will occur!). For me, at some point over the next month I’ll be starting a 6-month volunteer work project for Google (Morehouse School of Medicine project to help close the racial gaps for battling Covid-19)… more details as that evolves. And Kali will have some time to rest from her major work as co-treasurer for Calvin’s school’s PTA.

We miss being able to meet others in person. So connecting through email, phone calls and video chats is special and welcome. Everyone has a unique set of challenges, and for all of you we’re wishing times as good as possible.

Welcome to Summer, and be well!