Today was Kelly's follow up appointment with Dr. Thomas, the Neuro-Oncologist at UVM Medical Center. Kelly has gotten two MRI scans, one about a month post-radiation, and now two months post-radiation.
Two important findings are that the tumor has NOT grown since radiation
started, and we can see that the core of the tumor is dense,
probably dead tissue.
We started this treatment with daily radiation plus a low dose chemo. The chemo makes the tumor more
susceptible to the radiation, and the radiation makes the chemo more effective. So as far as we can tell, Dr. Nelson, the Radiation Oncologist and his ray-gun operations team seem to have hit the spot, so to speak.
It's normal for the brain to take months to clear dead tissue, so we hope to see a slow collapse of the tumor mass as that happens. We'll look again in two months to see exactly how that is going.
In the meantime, the whole area around the tumor is still irritated from the radiation and from the tumor itself. This means that Kelly still has numbness and partial paralysis of her right arm and hand, and it often feels what she calls "cranky", when the muscles are stiff and twitchy. That's a concern because we don't want to let that irritation and cranky twitchyness break out into another seizure. So Kelly is taking steroids to treat the inflammation, and dealing with all the side effects of that, and taking anti-seizure medicines, and dealing with the side effects of that, too.
We are continuing the chemotherapy with the same oral drug as before. Now she is on the full dose, taking it for 5 days, then "coasting" for 25. We will continue that, probably for a year. Kelly tolerates this drug well, and has not needed anti-nausea medication to go with the rest of her pharmacy.
Poor Kelly has lost most of her hair, but she rocks the head-scarf, even though she dislikes having to deal with it all the time.
Her right arm is still partially paralyzed, so she can't type. Many of you have probably gotten texts or emails from her, she uses dictation software to send them, so beware the sound-alike and auto-correct errors!
She also has the fuzziness and fatigue that many chemo patients have. They call it "Chemo-brain", and it frustrates her efforts to run the Farmers Market, and just keep life in order in general. She is trying to get more sleep, but the steroids make it hard to sleep, and the backlog of work she wants to do, but can't, keep her up at night too. Then she has frequent "nap attacks" when she just has to take a nap. So that is frustrating.
So you praying people: Praise for progress. Pray for continued healing. Pray for patience; pray for peace. Kelly says that she always feels that power, so keep it up.
We are trying to just do everything we would usually do, so we'll see you around soon.
