You take the Good, You take the Bad....

...you take them both and there you have 
The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life. 


So we got mixed news on Monday. Scans showed liver was clear, and that the ablations in Feb were successful. However, the scan also revealed that the Tumors in both lungs have gotten bigger. So Dr. Sophecleus, the IR surgeon, has begun scheduling lug ablations in late April, pending Kemeny's approval.

Kemeny is temporarily halting chemo, until we see a rheumatoid doc. Eric has been in crippling, and I mean crippling pain the last 3 weeks. To the point where he literally cannot get out of bed, and when he does he is moving like a 90 year old man. He said the pain in his muscles and joints was insane. He was using a heating pad on his back.

We thought maybe it was an issue with the Xeloda, but Kemeny does not think it would cause this incredible amount of pain. She believes it is actually his eczema. BEcause it is an autoimmune disorder, it can affect joints. His white blood cell count was also pretty high, at 21,000. He didn't have fever or any outward signs of infection, so she also believes it is inflammation related to the eczema (he also has 2 other autoimmune disorders-allergies and asthma). So she wants us to go to a specialist to get it treated...finding one is another story. She suggested we see a guy at Cornell, but I am just so tired of driving to NYC for all his docs. I wish I could find one down here at Penn or JEff, but the wait time is out of control. If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.

We do not want him off chemo for long, because we are finally seeing some decent drops in his CEA (tumor marker ) level. It went from 8.7 to 6.2 in a month. Last time his level was was as low as this was April of 2012, right after 2/3 of his liver was removed.  We need to keep the good stuff coming.