Blessings All Around!!

We received very good news from Houston. Alan's treatment is continuing to work and still "chipping" away at his tumors. On Alan's scans, it appeared that most of the smaller tumors in Alan's lungs are gone. Now, we can't be 100% sure about this, but we will know for sure when he does scans again in 7 weeks. There are still the larger spots in both lungs, but you could see a distinctive change in size from these scans and the ones from January. The tumor in Alan's abdominal area was the best change. The tumor appears to be dying. It is becoming a solid dark mass, so this was wonderful news. I think the Dr. said it is about 35 x 36 mm in size. The tumor in Alan's vertebrae appears to be stable. Dr. Amato pointed out there is no new growth anywhere either. So, I think I've gone over the main areas...lungs, vertebrae, abdomen. I'm going to try and get Alan's scans pulled up and post sometime soon. Alan will continue the same treatment...Sutent, Cytoxan and Metformin. They are increasing his Metformin from 500mg to 1000mg daily. Maybe this diabetic medicine is the magic trick to renal cell. Right now it's working for us...thank you Lord!!

Vertebroplasty....didn't happen. I can't say I'm real upset about this either. I was dreading every single moment of this surgery. Basically the reason they don't want to do anything yet is b/c they want to start weaning Alan off of the steroid first. If his pain comes back like before, then they will know that they need to try and do the Vertebroplasty again. The surgeon is hesitant about doing the surgery again b/c of the major risk involved with Alan's spine and tumor. He used the work "catastrophe". He does not want to get too much cement in there that bone fragments start to break off and rub against each other, and he does not want to push the tumor in to the spine or push things where more damage than good would be done. It's very risky. We sure do not want to make things worse, but we also don't want Alan to be in pain forever, but he can't live on these steroids forever either. They make him a little "moody" too...;-). haha

So, it was really a good appointment. We got to enjoy a few movies while we were in Houston. That was nice. The last time we got to watch a movie together was last summer when Alan was having his radiation in Houston.

Blessings All Around.....to Mrs. Wanda Garner for getting a good report with her CT. To Jeff Woods....heard from Lisa earlier...Jeff's cancer is stable and the Dr. felt very good about his checkup. To Alan for reaching a milestone. We've been climbing this mountain for a while, but we have reached a high peak. Praying no valleys in the future! We will enjoy this good news for a while.
God is good...All the time!!

PS....I had to change my comment settings. Someone went through and left inappropriate comments on most of my post. If you would like to leave a comment, you just have to log in and then I just have to approve it. Sorry....it only takes one to ruin things for everyone!!