Back Surgery is Scheduled for Today

Today began round 6 of chemo.   It was the fastest and smoothest one yet.  We had one of our favorite nurses Erin (she was actually our first so that maybe why we like her so much).  The port worked great and Erin got the IV in right away with a perfect blood return!  So we were off to a great start. Steve feels good today, his appetite is up and he’s just in a good mood.  He’s been unhappy the past week due to another sore on his tongue.  When he gets these sores he can’t eat much or even drink much.  So think about it, would you be miserable?  I know I would!!  So it was a tough week but yesterday he started feeling…

Today Steve and I saw the doctor and received the results from his CT Scan on Friday, his Bone Scan on Monday and his CEA blood work.   The CEA is 17 right now… it was 12.  It is slowly rising but not a huge jump in a month.  The bone scan showed some new “Spots” on his spine but nothing big that can be measured.   The CT Scan showed his tumors for the most part are “stable”.  The doctor thinks the CEA rising is due to the new spots on his spine. What the doctor doesn’t know is if the chemo Steve is on right now is slowing down the growth or not working at all and the growth is just slow.  That’s impossible to…

Our amazing community is hosting an evening of Yoga in honor of Steve this week.  I can’t even express in words what this means to our family.  Every week our friends amaze us with their love, support and generosity.   Calling ourselves Lucky doesn’t even describe what we feel.  LOVED is really more like it. Steve is a very proud man, so letting them do this for us has been very hard for him to accept.  But he’s realized that this is a way that all the people around us can help me, can take some sort of burden off of me.  It’s also a way for him to see how much love we have around us. I recently posted this on Facebook and I know…

Steve is doing great.  He’s just tired.  But he feels fine. The side effects from Chemo can come on at anytime but he’s doing really well so that helps.  He had trouble sleeping last night because one of the meds is a steroid – the nurse warned us about it. Steve is also having some back problems which is completely unrelated to the cancer, thankfully.  So his back was also very sore.  After he finally listened to me and took the pain pills they gave him at 2am, he was able to fall asleep and slept through till 10am! Who knew I actually knew what I was talking about! He’s tired still and has napped a few times but in general, he still feels great. …

Yesterday  (7/21/14) Steve and I received some really good news about his Stage 4 Colon Cancer.  His CEA number, which is the tumor marker in his blood, was lower – a lot lower!  When he was in the hospital the first week of June it was 536.  Then a few weeks later it was up to 834.8.  Yesterday it was 263.1.   Needless to say we both cried when I gave him the good news. That means the chemo is working. We saw the doctor today and he was very happy as well with the results.   He said the drop in his CEA is great after only 2 treatments.  I asked him if he expects that number to go to zero at some point, if…

The doctor called to tell Steve today that his CEA number is 12.  Last time it was 11 but the doctor says that’s still great and it will go up and down a bit, but doesn’t really mean anything.  So Steve was happy. Steve also noticed at 1pm today that his pump wasn’t working and we don’t think it pumped anything since we left the infusion center yesterday at 1pm.  🙁  So  now he’s hooked up until Saturday instead of Friday.  We weren’t very happy but nothing we can do.  Now we know to make sure it’s working like all the time.