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I was able to go to MD Anderson Oct. 28-30. The doctor there had more bad news in that since my lesions have moved to the bone in my spine it makes everything much harder to treat. Since my blood counts are so low she explained to me that the spine is where we get our red, white, and platelets. This was sufficient to make me ineligible for any of their experimental trials.

We are waiting for them to send my information back to my doctor in Greeley, CO to consider one of the options out there that treats bone cancer. However, this would not treat the cc. Basically, the doctors have done all they can do and this means Jesus is my only hope which is the way it has been from the beginning. It’s amazing to me that no matter how close we think we are walking in our relationship with God we can always walk closer. Here it is November, diagnosed in early Feb. and I’m still able to preach and do other things in my job. God’s blessings continue to flow even on this emotional roller coaster. I’m looking forward to family gatherings at Thanksgiving and Christmas especially my own two wonderful kids one touring with a performing Arts group in Germany, and the other attending college in Illinois.

My weight continues to fall and that alone tells me there’s not a lot of time left just from simple math. I’ve lost over a hundred pounds now and go in each week to have my abdomen drained. Thanks for helping and caring for people like me!

Many of you asked about my treatment so far. Here’s basically how my year has gone.

-Diagnosed with stage 4 in late January no known point of origin. The MRI showed spots on my spine, both lungs, to go along with my original CT scan that showed large spots in my liver. Since my doc couldn’t find a point of origin he put down pancreatic cancer and sent me for a second opinion at University of Colorado, Denver. Their diagnosis was rare bile duct cancer, inoperable and incurable. My mom’s a retired RN and said the liver can take a lot of abuse but the tumors are spread so it’s not about being able to cut off and isolate the tumors. At that time they said I had a 48% chance of being alive in a year. The doctors and U of CO Denver said the most they could do is make me as comfortable as possible for the time I had left. Since I came in for pain in my back and the CT scan was actually looking for gall stones or kidney stones. My treatment began with:
-10 days of radiation on the tumor on my spine about kidney high causing me so much pain.
– along with this there was one out of the two chemo drugs gemsar/cisplatin that could be taken along with the radiation so we did that.
-Since then I’ve had radiation on my neck, 10 days, on my lower spine at the same time, and halfway through they found a tumor on my right hip I just finished that radiation last week. We tried the chemo for three rounds of
-first week two drugs
-second week one drug
-third week no drug
But my blood counts especially white cells became critically low so we finally stopped. Both Denver and Greeley doc’s agreed the normal chemo for CC wasn’t working even though the tumor’s in my liver remained about the same size We thought that was a win even if the doc’s didn’t. I still think we should give that chemo a second chance with out the interruption of so much radiation. We went back to Denver to check into experimental treatments and we must wait until my blood gets back up to more normal numbers before we can try anything.
This is long so I’ll stop for now since we’re all waiting.