Now What?
That seems to be the question of the hour - so let me give a quick update. When Tom has his chemo treatments - meaning we are in the hospital and he is on the constant IV - that is just his chemo infusion. His actual treatment cycle is three weeks which is why we had chemo every third week. So while we are done with his chemo infusion (WOO HOO! Still very excited about that!), he is still technically in his fourth cycle of chemo and the drugs are still in his body and hopefully working their magic. I say all that to say that we unfortunately don’t know the impact yet that chemo has had on the tumor. We continue our normal routine with blood work tomorrow and next week and then we will be doing the scans on the 21st and find out the results on the 22nd. The scans will ensure that the cancer didn’t spread at all and determine how much the tumor shrunk – if at all. That second part is very important because that is really going to determine how rough Tom’s surgery will be.
When Is Surgery?
Our other money question – when is surgery. Surgery won’t be scheduled until (1) the scans are complete and we can get a plan of action (2) Tom’s body bounces back. As our oncologist told us, this is a huge fight that Tom has ahead of him and it will be critical that he is as close to 100% as possible. Plus, in my dream world we find out on the 22nd that it’s completely gone and there is no surgery. I’m ignoring the less than 1% chance that it could happen. A girl can dream! In all seriousness, the best Christmas present ever would be to find out when surgery will be at our appointments on the 22nd.
So it's a bit of a countdown until the 22nd for us now, we will just rest easier knowing what we are dealing with and when we can deal with it. It's painful to have to wait, but it's only 13 days away and I bet that will go faster than the last 20 minutes of chemo did on Sunday :) In the meantime, we will keep you updated as we always have and continue to blog as we get more information. Don't worry, I'm not done with all my rambling yet :) More to come...
That seems to be the question of the hour - so let me give a quick update. When Tom has his chemo treatments - meaning we are in the hospital and he is on the constant IV - that is just his chemo infusion. His actual treatment cycle is three weeks which is why we had chemo every third week. So while we are done with his chemo infusion (WOO HOO! Still very excited about that!), he is still technically in his fourth cycle of chemo and the drugs are still in his body and hopefully working their magic. I say all that to say that we unfortunately don’t know the impact yet that chemo has had on the tumor. We continue our normal routine with blood work tomorrow and next week and then we will be doing the scans on the 21st and find out the results on the 22nd. The scans will ensure that the cancer didn’t spread at all and determine how much the tumor shrunk – if at all. That second part is very important because that is really going to determine how rough Tom’s surgery will be.
When Is Surgery?
Our other money question – when is surgery. Surgery won’t be scheduled until (1) the scans are complete and we can get a plan of action (2) Tom’s body bounces back. As our oncologist told us, this is a huge fight that Tom has ahead of him and it will be critical that he is as close to 100% as possible. Plus, in my dream world we find out on the 22nd that it’s completely gone and there is no surgery. I’m ignoring the less than 1% chance that it could happen. A girl can dream! In all seriousness, the best Christmas present ever would be to find out when surgery will be at our appointments on the 22nd.
So it's a bit of a countdown until the 22nd for us now, we will just rest easier knowing what we are dealing with and when we can deal with it. It's painful to have to wait, but it's only 13 days away and I bet that will go faster than the last 20 minutes of chemo did on Sunday :) In the meantime, we will keep you updated as we always have and continue to blog as we get more information. Don't worry, I'm not done with all my rambling yet :) More to come...