Good Day (ish)

Yesterday was a decently good day.   My dad met with his oncologist, Dr. DeLuca.   He learned that his cancer is caused by a genetic defect. So they are switching him to a new chemo concoction WITH radiation, starting around the first week of March. He's been tattooed and petscanned.  His petscan came back good, relatively speaking, as it only detected the little (2cm) piece of cancer they had to leave in him during the last surgery, so that's good news.  (They had to leave that small piece of cancer in him because it was attached to his arterial vein, and scraping it off would have risked puncturing a main vein.)

No new cancer and the pain he's been having in his back since October seems to point to a slipped disk.   That's encouraging!   This, and along with two new aggressive forms of therapy is giving us hope that there will come a day when the treatments can be lessened and he can get on with enjoying life.  

We are looking forward to quality time on "Hammertime" this summer (our boat).   Last year's chemo left dad feeling yucky most of the time.   We are praying that this intensive treatment will be behind us with good results by mid-May--that's when he'll have another petscan done.  This regimen is supposed to be 5-6 weeks of radiation with chemo every week (he did every-other week last year).   And this time, he will lose his hair... maybe it will come back curly and he'll rock a 'flo' this year.