Second trip of 2011...

Well we are home again, back from our second trip to Illinois for 2011. It was an ok trip without any hospital stays. Though, Brian did stay in the hospital almost the entire week prior to the trip.


Brian had a CT scan which shows tumors in his Sacrum. I had never heard of this body part so I of course had to Google it. Apparently this is part of the pelvic region of the bone structure. Brian’s groin and hip pain is caused from these tumors.


Brian had the same chemo on Thursday February 17, 2011. The Dr. had the Carboplatin administered over 2 hours rather than one so that maybe Brian would not have the same reaction. Unfortunately, Brian did have the same reaction but not quite as severe. He was able to go back to the hotel room and get the pain under control. We will be talking to the Dr. about this further next visit in March.

We also saw the Radiation Oncologist while in Illinois. He actually showed me the films of Brian’s tumors and I can now look at them and kind of know what I am looking for when scanning a disk. I am by no means a diagnostician when it comes to looking at these films. Anyway, Brian is going to be scheduled for 15 rounds of radiation to his Sacrum to help get rid of the pain. We will go from there.

Tumor counts keep going up. We are not sure how many are in his liver, but they have grown since September last year. The largest tumor is 4.5 centimeters. He has the tumor on the right side of his skull that has been radiated and seems stable. He also has one on the left side of his skull that has begun to bother him. He has tumors in his ribs both on the right and left side. There are tumors in his upper and lower spine and a large tumor in his left femur. Some of the tumors in his spine are growing toward his spinal cord where others are not. This is one of the things I learned from looking at the scans with the Radiation Oncologist. We really liked Dr. Chang, he took time to look at the scans and show us/me what we were looking at.

Anyway, this is our update for February. We are looking forward to our trip to Texas the first week of March. This will be an actual vacation before Brian goes and starts his next round of chemo and the 3 weeks of radiation.


Thanks to everyone for the prayers and well wishes. We really do appreciate you all.