Good bye Steve!!

Steve finished his 8th round of chemo about a week ago.  This was the 2nd round of chemo with the reduced 5-FU (along with a reduction of all meds due to his weight loss).   The first time he didn’t see much of a difference as far as side effects go, but the second time he did. The 5-FU is responsible for the mouth sores and the tingling in his hands, fingers and feet mostly.  I guess it’s also responsible for the exhaustion because this last round he wasn’t as tired either.  He thought we has getting a mouth sore but it never really turned into one.  And his taste buds finally came back this weekend.  When he woke up Friday morning and realize that we…

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…

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…

Happy New Year! The last chemo treatment Steve received on Christmas Eve went well.  He over did it over the holiday with all our company so he was exhausted coming out of it, but he enjoyed the time we spent with friends and family so it was worth it for him.  He also got another mouth sore this time around, however it wasn’t at it’s worst and he was still able to eat more than just soft foods.  That said, he still dropped a few pounds.  He’s going to try and work on putting those back on this week. The doctor checked his CEA number on Monday and it was 15.6, which is a little higher than last time.  We never head from the doctor…

Tomorrow will be Steve’s 12th Chemo treatment and his last one for this 6 month set.  We thought 6 months actually went till January but nope, it’s done tomorrow.  But that just means it’s time to change it up a bit. Currently Steve is receiving the FOLFOX cocktail of chemotherapy which consists of 5-FU, Leucovorin, and Oxaliplatin.  I am slowly learning about each of these drugs.  The 5-FU is the one that was causing the mouth sores and is also the one that he gets on a slow drip for the 48 hours at home.  You may recall that in October he reduced that one by 15% to hopefully stop the mouth sores – and it worked!  We’ve checked his CEA number once since the…

As a parent, the last thing we ever want to do is see our children hurt. We’ve raised our girls with so much love and protection in the hopes that they would always feel safe with us. As a family, we’ve been through a lot the past 23 months and we’ve tried to be as honest as we could with the girls, letting them know along the way how much we love them and that everything would always be “okay”. Today we had to do the hardest thing ever… today we told the girls that the chemo isn’t working and the tumors are still growing. And even though daddy was going to continue on chemo the next 6 months, ultimately it’s just to get more…