Friday, March 13, 2015

Happy Friday! Great News!


The results are back and I bet you can guess by our celebratory selfie in the oncologist’s office that they are good!
The MRI of his brain showed NO infection, NO clots, NO new tumors, and all lesions are confirmed necrotic–Dead. “Tumor necrosis” is the fancy medical term for that, and I feel like I want to carry a balloon around today with that written on it! What makes me even happier about this news is that there is also NO inflammation due to the necrosis. High five!
The CT scan showed NO growth and NO new tumors. Double high five! Oh man. So relieved.
Repeat MRI won’t be for 3 months (sweet!) and repeat CT will be routine in two weeks as we now move onto maintenance chemotherapy with pemetrexed (and still the trial drug ruxolitinib). The timeline for this maintenance phase is TBD as we don’t know when Dan’s cancer will progress again. We hope to see at least 5-8 months, which is the average for NSCLC. The greater hope would be 12-24 months! Let’s break the record book, Dan! ðŸ™‚ Regardless of the time, because of his ALK mutation, when this phase ends, we have two more targeted therapies we can pursue for him that are pill form, already FDA approved, and very promising. (And THEN, two more in the pipeline!)
So today is a good day for our little family living with lung cancer.
Thank you everyone for your thoughts, prayers, super rad vibes, and generosity. We love you all back!

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