I am thrilled to say that Tom is feeling great, and getting stronger each day as we get closer to our next round of chemo. Yes, a bit of a buzz kill knowing we’ve only got a week until the next round, but he is enjoying these “good” days as much as he can. As I was looking at the blog today, I saw that on the archives section we now have three months listed. WHAT?! I will say this, for some reason November was a breath of fresh air. There is something about knowing that we are in November that means major milestone #1 - finishing chemo - is near, since that should be the first week of December. (33 days!) It also helps that we’ve got the holidays coming up to give us other dates to anchor to and get excited about, but regardless, I can’t believe this madness started 8+ weeks ago.
Now, we begin the rather daunting task of starting to get all of our ducks in a row for the surgery that he will need (major milestone #2). We were told that we would start this process after his second round of chemo, because there isn’t a whole lot they can do until they start to see the numbers drop and can anticipate what will need to be done via surgery. There was a 1% chance that he wouldn’t need surgery, but that has already been ruled out. Never mind that he dominated the odds of getting this cancer but can't catch a break on that 1%. ;-) So now we just hope that it gets small enough that it doesn’t have to be a major procedure and instead can be done in a less intrusive way with a short recovery time. We do know that surgery won’t be until late December or early January because they won’t do surgery until his body has had time to bounce back from his last round of chemo. Realistically, since that will be his fourth round it will take little time for all his levels to get up to an acceptable range that deems him safe for surgery. But for now, we start meeting with the doctors and get ourselves educated on this last little adventure of getting rid of cancer. We meet with his doctors on Thursday and will get blood work done again – hopefully no transfusion needed, and hopefully good news from his doctors on progress.
For the record… the remaining major milestones after #1 and #2 are:
#3 CANCER FREE
#4 a YouTube worthy happy dance
...and last but not least...
#5 a strong drink.
More updates to come on Thursday when we know more :)
Now, we begin the rather daunting task of starting to get all of our ducks in a row for the surgery that he will need (major milestone #2). We were told that we would start this process after his second round of chemo, because there isn’t a whole lot they can do until they start to see the numbers drop and can anticipate what will need to be done via surgery. There was a 1% chance that he wouldn’t need surgery, but that has already been ruled out. Never mind that he dominated the odds of getting this cancer but can't catch a break on that 1%. ;-) So now we just hope that it gets small enough that it doesn’t have to be a major procedure and instead can be done in a less intrusive way with a short recovery time. We do know that surgery won’t be until late December or early January because they won’t do surgery until his body has had time to bounce back from his last round of chemo. Realistically, since that will be his fourth round it will take little time for all his levels to get up to an acceptable range that deems him safe for surgery. But for now, we start meeting with the doctors and get ourselves educated on this last little adventure of getting rid of cancer. We meet with his doctors on Thursday and will get blood work done again – hopefully no transfusion needed, and hopefully good news from his doctors on progress.
For the record… the remaining major milestones after #1 and #2 are:
#3 CANCER FREE
#4 a YouTube worthy happy dance
...and last but not least...
#5 a strong drink.
More updates to come on Thursday when we know more :)