With Cancer comes decsions and redecsions.

Well I'll start off with the good news. We had the follow-up with the Urologist. And there is no cancer in the testicle. He put ted on Levaquin a pretty strong antibiotic. After 5 days on things are starting to look a little better. Doesn't seem to be so infected or painful.

Thursday Ted had a CT Scan of his brain, and we got the results on Friday and everything looked good. No tumors or spots. This is good. We can deal with this kind of news. Especially after finding out it is in the bladder we weren't sure where else it is. They have told us in the past that the first place colon cancer goes is the liver. But because he has so many ureter problems and the tumor is sitting on top of his bladder and engulfing the ureters and tailbone, I guess the next logical place would be the bladder.

In any case, in our meeting with the oncologist, we made a new decision to start chemo again. Now I know what your thinking, make up your mind. But how can you make up your mind when you know that the Cpt11 is bringing your numbers lower. Actually went down to 24 from 58. And now they are back up to 66. So we came up with a new plan. Now remember Ted is unconventional and so his doctor works with us and comes up with unconventional treatment. Instead of doing the cpt11 full dose every other week, we are going to do a half dose once a week for two weeks and then two weeks off. 2 weeks on 2 weeks off. We are adding in the 5FU, which isn't as horrible as the cpt11, it is much milder. He will eventually add in the avastin after he heals up from his surgery. Avastin can prevent healing, so we don't want to stop that. He is already at a high risk for infection.

So besides the numbers (tumor marker) going up so rapidly, another reason we decided to do the chemo is because if we don't he will progress down hill much more rapidly than if was on chemo. As it was since his last dose of chemo at the end of January. Ted was in the emergency room twice, once for swelling and another time for breathing issues. He has had continuous edema in his legs and ankles. His lymph nodes under his arms and in the groin are swollen and the pain in his tailbone is increasing. It has seemed in the past that the chemo seems to help with the pain and it also seems to settle the lymph nodes down some so that the swelling also subsides. No one can say for sure that the chemo helps that but the pattern fits. But there is so many variables that who really knows. It is all a guessing game.

So as of today ted seems to be doing ok on the chemo. A little slow and it seems to be messing with his head a little but hopefully he will pop out of it soon. If not we will go and get some fluids and nausea meds. Sometimes that helps.

Well I think that covers the update and everything that has been going on. We see the pulmonologist tomorrow to get the test results back from all the breathing issues he has been having. The breathing issues seem to be a little better so it will be interesting to see what he has to say about it all. I'll keep you posted.