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. 

 

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

Captain Kevin, doing what he loves best.