Trying to Maintain

Of course, our doctor and nurse practitioner are both on vacation this week, the very week we get the PET scan to determine if Karen's chemo is working. Less expected, our NP directed the oncology office to contact her if any of her patients' test results came in. So we got Karen's results via a beach somewhere in Mexico.

And it appears the chemo is working. While there is still metabolic tumor activity, there is no growth or metastatic activity. So now Karen will transition into maintenance chemo. She'll be sticking to the same schedule of getting infusions every three weeks but the med mixture will be limited just to the Alimta. We are hopeful that the more stripped-down medication regimen will make her recovery period shorter and less unpleasant. She'll continue with this course of action until we see evidence of it no longer being effective.

This also means that Karen will go ahead with getting her port, uh, installed. That will happen sometime next week, giving her just enough time  to recover from the minor outpatient surgery to have the oncologists jack into that port for her first maintenance chemo treatment on the 28th.

To celebrate, I'll be taking Karen to the weed store this weekend for their big 4/20 gala. See you at the Berkeley Patients Care Collective!