Too long

Here are some pics then I'll do a post with info

Pics

Skiing on mt hood with Ani yesterday

Big creek fishing with my friend John

More pics

Info

Laura had scans earlier this week.  Chemo yesterday.  She has two small tumors in her brain. 2 and 4 mm in size.  She is going to continue on the T-DM1 chemo till march and then more scans and gamma knife the tumors they saw today in March with whatever else shows up.  

Ani is home after a 2.5 month solo camping and biking road trip.  She plans to go to portland state unv next year to major in earth science.

Tim is good at Clatsop community college and so am I. I'll post a few more pics in a minute but this dumb app keeps crashing. 

We are back in the country from 19 days in Greece.  It was a wonderful trip and as always it is great to be home.  Laura is really tired from chemo and 10 hours of jet lag but doing well.  I am finding working during the summer really isn't as much fun as it sounds.  But the new job is going just fine.  My gardens survived our trip and we saw a great Blind Pilot concert last night in the Liberty Theater in Astoria.  Here are a few pics from Greece if you did not see my face book album.

We sailed on the tall ship Sea Cloud.  My Mom took us on the National Geographic cruise!  It was amazing.  Love to you all!

Back to the chemo room

Today Laura starts a new chemo that will totally destroy the evil cancer in her brain and body!

I went shopping!  Delicious pho noodle bowls for lunch!!!   

If anyone is wierd like me and likes to see detailed medical info on a procedure look below. This is a page from her gamma knife radiation zapping tumors a couple weeks ago.   It's so precise.

Back to the chemo room

Today Laura starts a new chemo that will totally destroy the evil cancer in her brain and body!

I went shopping!  Delicious pho noodle bowls for lunch!!!   

If anyone is wierd like me and likes to see detailed medical info on a procedure look below. This is a page from her gamma knife radiation zapping tumors a couple weeks ago.   It's so precise.

Today's appointment

We feel good about Dr. Laura's doctors appointment today. The bottom line is she will start a new regiment of Chemotherapy next Tuesday.  She will be on TDM-1 which is a targeted chemo.   Herceptin marks the HER2 + cancer and the chemo attachs specific proteins in the herceptin has marked so it's a two stage process on the cancer cells.

Dr Raish feels good about trying something else and is hopeful.  I feel like it's a new treatment which will hopefully keep Laura alive another year.  With another year new things come on the market and new trials will come too.

Particulars about her cancer: The worry some spot in her lower left lung is indeed cancer and it has grown 5 mm in the past six weeks.  Dr Raish is not worried about her lung spot right now.  Also it will be a good marker to see if the TSM-1 is working.

 Three of the brain tumors that she  had zapped out last week where there before.   They have all grown since last January where they were Gamma knifed out.

 Actually a more positive visit than this sounds like

She's out of surgery

Laura is out of surgery.  Ani and Laura are going to get Thai food now.   She is tired and sad and soar but ok.  Thanks for all the positive energy.  They ended up zapping 22 spots in her brain.

Gamma knife today

Laura is currently in getting tumors gamma knifed.  Unfortunately the Number of tumors has increased from 4 to 21 that they will zap today. She will be in for over five hours getting the gamma knife procedure. The large increase is likely due to both the MRI this morning has a finer resolution as well as a fast growing cancer.  I will try to update this blog later today when she gets out of the gamma knife procedure.

The good and the bad

Our tall beautiful boy Tim  graduated today!!!  Go Tim!  Earlier in the week he hauled in $9000 in local scholarships!  He's the man!  He is planning to take prerequisite  classes at our local Clatsop Community College next year and then go to Oregon Institue of Technology to major in mechanical engineering in the fall of 2017.  

Ani is home for the summer and will take a year off of college. She wants to be closer to mom and is burnt out of school but she will go back- don't you worry east coast family!

Laura:  while she has clean scans in the middle of April, was feeling bad and dizzy and vertigo last weekend so she demanded an MRI.  She has 4 new tumors in her brain.  She will get them gamma knife zapped this Wednesday June 15.  Her dr feels confident that he can zap them.  He reiterated that the brain tumors will continue to be chronic issues and everyone is different on how many gamma knife radiations they can handle.

This is the third year in a row that Laura has gotten shitty cancer news the week before graduation...  I am totally dreading this time of year.   Before Ani's graduation Lu was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer where it spread to her liver lungs and lymph nodes.   Last year she has her first brain tumors- 18 requiring whole brain radiation.  And now more brain mets...   One step at a time

Tomorrow, Sunday, we have a big grad party for our boy!   Party on!   It's more for us parents and  am excited.  Four close friends came over today and scrubbed our house....  We have good friends.  My mom and dad are here watching and helping with the festivities.  Love you all!  Sorry I don't post more...

Short and sweet

Laura had her quarterly MRI and ct scans yesterday.  No brain mets!!  Her brain looks good which she was really worried about!  The last three brain MRIs have shown mets so that is great.   There is a 9 by 14 by 8 mm spot in her left lung that could be just conjestion or cancer.  More tests in two weeks to determine what that is but the rest looks good.  We are happy.  

An extra week off chemo

Laura gets an extra week off chemo!  Laura met with Dr Garreau and Dr Raish on Wednesday.  She had to meet with her surgical oncologist, Dr Garreau, because she developed a very bad infection last week around one of her implants.  Dr Garreau's office perscriped her  strong anti biotics a week ago Friday and needed to check in with her.  The infection has completely gone away now and today, Friday the 12th, is her last day on antibiotics.

She also met with Dr Raish as her regular 4 to 6 week check ins.  Dr Raish wanted her to take an extra week off both her chemo and biological medications.  The reason is that several fingers have open cracks that won't heal, she has a lip/mouth sore that won't heal and she is loosing weight.   He is hoping that her fingers will heal and she might get her appitite back and stop the weight loss of the last couple months.  Her lip sore has already gone away as of this morning!  

All else is going well.  I am wrestling with whether or not to apply for the director position where I work.  The two major reasons not to are it would take me out of the schools and I would not have direct student contact which I love; and I would not get two months off in the summer which I adore!   My parents  and their large golden retriever have left Maine in their Subaru and are driving west to spend a couple months in Astoria!  Please wish them luck!!!

Tim is a second semester senior!   He has been admitted to Oregon institute of technology and has gotten a couple scholarships so far!  Ani is doing well in la and we are all excited to see her for her spring break on March 4th.  Hapoy year of the monkey everyone!!!

The good and the bad

EHappy New Years friends and family!  I have good new and bad news... Alway start with the good!  Our trip to Belize was wonderful!  Sun snorkeling beaches Mayan ruins birds monkeys good drink and relaxing!  Ani and Tim like that they could walk down the beach at night when the old folks went to bed and go to a bar for pina coladas or some other tropical fruity drink!  Laura did yoga by the pool every morning followed by reading by the pool.  Tim and I snorkeled a bunch: fish coral sharks moray eels turtles dolphins and such...  Just beautiful!  We relaxed and loved the little bustling island we were on!

Ani and the stray "Rosy" that adopted us.  She would be sleeping in a chair on our balcony when we came home at night!!!

Christmas dinner

Post snorkeling.  It was a wonderful trip!!

So the bad news:  Laura had scans this week and the stupid cancer is back in her brain.  She has three or four small brain mets 2 to 4 mm in size.  Two are probably left over from earlier but are growing and the other are new...  She is going to have a gamma knife radio surgery on Monday Jan 18 to get them zapped.  Basically lots (160+) gamma rays go through her head and converge on one tiny spot to zap the heck out of it.since the gamma rays are vary low intensity it does not do damage passing through the brain just damage to the exact spot.

There is no cancer in the body which is good!  Her doctors said this is likely to be a common occurs cr of finding small brain mets and they will continue to gamma knife them as long as they can.  Unfortunately it means that the chemo and targeted therapy she is on is not really controlling the brain mets...  Below is a short YouTube video on gamma knife procedure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8SIOaJ7lWQ

We are all sad by this but Laura is tough. The actual procedure will be from 7 am in Portland until mid or late afternoon and then she can come home with me the same day...  It's the same day Ani flights back to oxy for second semester so she will have to get up extra early!  Love you all!