Seth's Info

It’s been over a week since my last post, and I’m happy to report that Jenny and I are back home with the kids and things are a little bit more “normal”. It has been a tough couple of weeks, and we appreciate the multitude of support and sympathy expressed for the passing of Jenny’s mother last week. She was laid to rest on Monday, and was remembered by family and friends as a loving and generous wife, mother, grandmother and friend.

As for me, I am feeling better today than I have in about 2 weeks. After my initial bought of nausea, I was extremely fatigued and my esophagus started to act up again. This made eating difficult, which is very frustrating when you are trying to stay healthy. I had to make numerous visits to Fox Chase over the last 2 weeks to support data collection for the trial, but my last blood draw was yesterday. I’ll be returning for my next “round” the day after Memorial Day, which gives me a whole week and half to stay at home, enjoy life, and hopefully feel pretty good. These subsequent cycles of chemotherapy will not require the same level of support for the trial, so it should only take 2 or 3 days of travel, depending on how things go with side effects etc. My most recent C/T scans showed that the 6cm tumor in the pelvis was now 9cm (I expected this since it had been over 2 months since the last scan), a smaller adjacent tumor (1cm), and some bone lesions in the sacrum. The good news is that there were no mets in the lungs, which can create a whole separate host of problems. I will get rescaned after 3 cycles, which is where we will hope to see tumor shrinkage (or at a minimum, tumor stablity).

Chemotherapy drugs work by attacking fast growing cells during cell division. The drugs attack the genes in the nucleus during the division process (different drugs do this in different ways, but the fundamental concept is the same). Most of an adult body’s cells rarely divide, but your body has other frequently dividing cells like hair, skin, blood cells, and digestive tract linings -- these cells are also “attacked” during treatment, causing many of the common treatment side effects. Normal cells typically repair damage more quickly than cancer cells, which is why the overall treatment approach works. Monitoring blood cell counts is a big deal during treatment, including white blood cells (which fight off infection), red blood cells (which carry oxygen to your body’s tissue), and platelets (which are critical in blood clot formation). My white blood cell count was low this week, which forces you to go into “don’t touch me” mode to prevent picking up any stray germs which your body can’t fight off very well. Fortunately, I seem to have avoided getting sick, and my blood counts are back up to normal as of yesterday.

We did get some other very exciting news this week. As you may recall, we added a puppy to our family in January, a female Australian Shepherd named Zuzu. Since my sickness, the breeder, Kelly, has been graciously taking care of her. We are still not prepared to raise and train a puppy, but we have now arranged with Kelly to take ownership of a 4 year old male Aussie named Sorrell who is looking for a good home. Sorrell was trained in obedience and agility by a teenager who has now gone off to college. This might seem a little crazy right now, but we feel strongly about the positive effects of having a well-behaved, medium-sized adult dog around the house. I’ll post some pictures when he arrives this weekend.

Jenny and I will be around through Memorial Day, so feel free to call or arrange a visit (just don’t be offended if I don’t shake your hand!). Our continued thanks for all the support, prayers, cards, emails and phone calls, we appreciate it all.

Take care,
Seth