Dr. Rixe Says

First of all, make sure you check out the previous post, which is from Natalie, with the pictures of the quilt.  We were posting at the same time, but I finished a little later, which bumped it down.  So take a look!

Now: I haven't had a chance to sit down and write about Wednesday's meeting with Dr. Rixe et al, so here goes.  It's actually very exciting because he mentioned that there are three possible outcomes for treatment: 1) the tumor will be operable (yay!), 2) the tumor would be inoperable (boo!), or 3) the tumor would be inactive, and thus virtually eliminated.  There would still be tissue remaining but no active cancer cells (YAY!).  The third option has never been mentioned before, probably because no one expected her tumor to respond so well to the treatments.  Mom was really excited about that possibility when she told me about it.  Her whole face lit up.

The other thing that came out of the meeting with Dr. Rixe is that the final round of chemo, which was to occur starting tonight, will actually happen next Tuesday.  Basically, he just wants to give her a few more days to rest before they begin.  She will finish her round of antibiotics from her hospital stay on Friday, 9/3, so he probably just wants to give that a chance to complete whatever work it needed to do and get her in the best possible shape for this last go round.  She spent the night tonight in Cincinnati and will probably be home around 1pm after her radiation tomorrow, which will give her a good start on a restful long weekend. No radiation Monday.

Looking ahead, she will have an MRI in four weeks as well as a PET scan to determine the outcome of this course of treatment.  Then we'll know whether we have #1 or #3-- #2 can just go its way.

I should be accurate now with my time stamp (thanks, Ryan!!).

Much love,
jk

PS Leah Ott wrote to me that they lit a candle for Mom in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.  Pretty cool!  Thanks, Otts!