December 31, 2014
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!! I hope the new year brings prosperity and health to all.
Kevin will no longer be on high does interleukin 2 treatments as they did not work for him. On to plan B, which is a chemo therapy drug, taken once a day, called sutent or sunitinib. Dr. George at Duke University Hospital believes the best course of action is sutent for 3 months with the hopes that it will shrink the tumors. If it shrinks it, but not enough, he can stay on it longer until it shrinks it more. Some people have been on this medication for years, keeping cancer in a "controlled" stage. Sutent has a 70% chance of keeping cancer in control, those aren't bad odds. Although a cure would be much better.
If it does shrink them, Kevin will be a candidate to have them removed either by surgery, ablation or gamma knife. Surgery should be able to be performed laparoscopically. Ablation is where they go into the tumor and burn the blood supply to the tumor, therefore killing it. Gamma knife is radiation therapy that focuses a bunch of beams of radiation on the tumor to kill it. It would be wonderful if that would happen and we could get rid of this cancer. Kidney cancer is quite tenacious!
I will start a new blog detailing his time on sutent.
Thanks for reading and following along with us :)
Wednesday 31 December 2014
Tuesday 23 December 2014
Post treatment appointment of Interleukin 2 treatments, the outcome
December 23, 2014
Well, the news wasn't what we wanted to hear. I really went in the doctors office yesterday full of hope, thinking we would never have to think about this stupid cancer again, but I guess hope isn't always enough. The treatments didn't work as well as it could have. But it's not all terrible. The good news, some of the spots shrunk a little and there is no evidence it is ANYWHERE else in his body, thank you Lord. Also, 3 of the spots (in the muscle by the pelvic, the right adrenal gland and where they clipped the kidney) are 1/4 of an inch and one spot (in the liver) is 1 inch, all very small. The bad news is, one of the spots grew from the last scan (the liver spot). And since the ones that shrunk; shrunk only a little, they said it's not likely another round of treatments will give him the cure we are wanting.
There maybe laparoscopic surgery to remove one spot, the one in the liver that grew. The liver has lobes, so removing a lobe is possible and relatively "easy", if you can use that word. There is also gama knife which goes into the tumor and burns it till it's dead. But with the gamma knife you have to be careful not to burn other organs that are close by. There is also something called ablation, where they kill the blood supply to the tumor and therefore kills the tumor. And there are also a few medications that have shown to keep these little tumors the same size they are now for many many years, kind of like a controlled cancer. Of course the best proven treatment for this cancer is surgery. The adrenal gland and spot where the kidney was cut off are really hard to do surgery on, only due to the amount of scar tissue people have after they remove a kidney. So that may not be an option, I'm not sure at this point. We are meeting with the head of the oncology department on Tuesday, December 30th to discuss our options and what he thinks is best. The doctor we spoke with yesterday is the head of the interleukin 2 department, so he specializes in only this treatment, not ALL treatments like the head of the oncology department does. We may get a different story next week, I'm not really sure. I've noticed that when you have a sickness that makes you see many different doctors, you get many different opinions.
So today I will be offline praying for internal peace in God's will, trying to find the silver lining. Sometimes it takes me a few days. I am sad today, but I can't sit around crying because I want my kids to see; what I should see (and will see eventually), that there is hope.
There maybe laparoscopic surgery to remove one spot, the one in the liver that grew. The liver has lobes, so removing a lobe is possible and relatively "easy", if you can use that word. There is also gama knife which goes into the tumor and burns it till it's dead. But with the gamma knife you have to be careful not to burn other organs that are close by. There is also something called ablation, where they kill the blood supply to the tumor and therefore kills the tumor. And there are also a few medications that have shown to keep these little tumors the same size they are now for many many years, kind of like a controlled cancer. Of course the best proven treatment for this cancer is surgery. The adrenal gland and spot where the kidney was cut off are really hard to do surgery on, only due to the amount of scar tissue people have after they remove a kidney. So that may not be an option, I'm not sure at this point. We are meeting with the head of the oncology department on Tuesday, December 30th to discuss our options and what he thinks is best. The doctor we spoke with yesterday is the head of the interleukin 2 department, so he specializes in only this treatment, not ALL treatments like the head of the oncology department does. We may get a different story next week, I'm not really sure. I've noticed that when you have a sickness that makes you see many different doctors, you get many different opinions.
So today I will be offline praying for internal peace in God's will, trying to find the silver lining. Sometimes it takes me a few days. I am sad today, but I can't sit around crying because I want my kids to see; what I should see (and will see eventually), that there is hope.
Thank you all for following our story, I hope this blog has helped some of you to understand what you, or a loved one, maybe facing. I will write more after we see the doctor next week.
xoxo
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| Captain Kevin, doing what he loves best. |
Saturday 6 December 2014
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
December 6, 2014
We have all of our Christmas decorations up! It's early for us this year, but we all needed a little Christmas spirit this Christmas season after the year we had.
Kevin is back at work for a week now. But he's been pretty tired. I don't know if it's still the interleukin 2 or just the stress of it all getting to him. But he made it through the week and I am proud of him. Today is Saturday and we are resting, well he is, I am running around trying to get a few more things up for Christmas.
This is Kevin's favorite Christmas decoration :) He loves the bumble from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.
I want to wish everyone a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! HAPPY HOLIDAYS! AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Thank you all for reading :)
We have all of our Christmas decorations up! It's early for us this year, but we all needed a little Christmas spirit this Christmas season after the year we had.
Kevin is back at work for a week now. But he's been pretty tired. I don't know if it's still the interleukin 2 or just the stress of it all getting to him. But he made it through the week and I am proud of him. Today is Saturday and we are resting, well he is, I am running around trying to get a few more things up for Christmas.I want to wish everyone a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! HAPPY HOLIDAYS! AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Thank you all for reading :)
Monday 1 December 2014
Interleukin - 2 Back to work
December 1, 2014
Kevin went back to work today. He's been off since October 20, I'm sure his co-workers will be happy to see him again. He looks a little weak to me. He's still nauseated, which totally stinks! I wish that would go away for him. He's lost a little over 20 pounds. He's also still tired, but then again, we do have 2 boys keeping him busy. The other night we were both up because our youngest had a stomach virus, no rest for the weary, lol. I'm not quite sure he was ready to go back to work, but I'm sure he will be fine. His co-workers and job have been very good to him through all of this.
We are awaiting his scans on the 22nd of this month. Anxious, nervous, excited, and praying that it will have made a positive difference and that he can be one of the lucky ones who is cured.
Thank you all for sharing this journey with us! God bless you.
He made it through the whole day :) He's a real trooper!!
Kevin went back to work today. He's been off since October 20, I'm sure his co-workers will be happy to see him again. He looks a little weak to me. He's still nauseated, which totally stinks! I wish that would go away for him. He's lost a little over 20 pounds. He's also still tired, but then again, we do have 2 boys keeping him busy. The other night we were both up because our youngest had a stomach virus, no rest for the weary, lol. I'm not quite sure he was ready to go back to work, but I'm sure he will be fine. His co-workers and job have been very good to him through all of this.
We are awaiting his scans on the 22nd of this month. Anxious, nervous, excited, and praying that it will have made a positive difference and that he can be one of the lucky ones who is cured.
Thank you all for sharing this journey with us! God bless you.
He made it through the whole day :) He's a real trooper!!
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