Chemo is changing next month…
Steve saw his Oncologist today and his CEA is still going up, slowly but it’s going up. Today it was 20. In March it was 17 and in February it was 12. So it’s moving up but that’s not the direction the doctor wants to see it go. That means the cancer is also growing. So it’s time to change chemo treatments.
We are going on another family trip this month, this time out to California to Disneyland!! The girls are VERY excited. The doctor is going to wait until after our trip to change his chemo. Tomorrow will be his last one on this type of chemo and then he’ll take a break so he’ll feel great on our trip.
It’ll actually be a nice break – 5 weeks total!
Once we come back from our trip, the doctor will do scans and more blood work to have A baseline before the next chemo starts. And that same week, Steve and the girls will go to the Father Daughter Dance together.
Then he’ll be back on the first chemo he was on in June 2014 with the bag that comes home for 46 hours. He’s not looking forward to being tied to that bag or to the side effects that come along with it, but it is what it is. Not much we can do about it.
The doctor gave him some medication to help with some of the side effects this time around, so hopefully that helps.
This is the last chance. Not that we expect this chemo to cure his cancer, because there is too much of it to cure. He can only have this treatment 12 times total. After that, the only thing left is a pill that the doctor says he hasn’t had a lot of luck with. But Steve and I decided that he’ll at least give it a try for a month or two.
Time is what we’ve always had with chemo, and the more time we have, the better for all of us, especially the girls.
But other than that, chemo ends this fall. It’s not the end of chemo that we had hoped for when this all began, but it’s almost 2 years later and he’s still here so that’s good.
We’ve also decided that when chemo ends this fall, we’ll probably take the girls on one last trip together back to the mother ship – Disney World. It’s really our happy place and we all love being there together. And then we’ll take it one day at a time, do things together as a family and enjoy the holidays together.
There is only one person who knows how this will all go and I leave it in His hands.