Sunday, December 2, 2007

the other good news of christmas

lots of you know that john's mom, sandra, has been battling metastatic breast cancer for the last year. she was diagnosed and started treatment in april or so and had to change/stop chemotherapy a little over half way through the process because the chemo started to be a bigger problem for her than the cancer. she was exhausted (and i don't mean that lightly) and started losing feeling in her fingers and toes- so blaine, the nurse practitioner, called a temporary stop to the treatment. needless to say, it was frightening to think of all of those beastly little cancer cells running unchecked through sandra's body and we were all nervous (though none of us would admit that to anyone else) to see what the outcome of that interruption to treatment would bring.

well, what happened was in a word...miraculous.

sandra has not had ANY chemo in almost 3 months and her tumor marker levels have continued to drop EVEN more (that's a good thing, it indicates that the tumors themselves are shrinking). we were overjoyed to know that she's OK- although we know she's been in Good Hands the whole time. it's also wonderful to know that she won't have to start chemo (and the unbelievable fatigue and poor health that causes) over the holidays. what's more, her NP says that if her PET scan still looks good in january- she won't have any chemo scheduled now at all. they'll just be monitoring her bloodwork and keeping chemo "in the arsenal" for later use.

thank you, all of you who have so faithfully prayed for sandra throughout all of this. we truly appreciate it!

1 comment:

Stephanie said...

yay!! I'm so, so glad to hear this. I've been meaning to ask you forever about how she is doing, but it has slipped my mind.