Thursday July 23…

Over the last 3-4 days my pain has been getting so bad, in my ankles, knees, sacrum, left jaw and base of neck. I was able to have a video appointment on Tuesday with the Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner who was amazing and explained to me that bone mets are very painful and that explains the pain that I am in. She put me on a pain medication regimen and I have an appointment with them on Wednesday to check in and see how things are going. So far I feel a little better so I am so thankful.

I had my big appointment yesterday with Dr. Man, my Oncologist, and I guess it went well. So my spine MRI shows lesions in pretty much every vertebrae, too many to mention, but good thing is that it is NOT in my spinal cord!!

First things first I will be having whole brain radiation. I have my planning scan tomorrow at 11 am and will start next week when they get the plan ready, hoping Monday but that might be too quick. It will be for 10 treatments Monday-Friday. I will most likely get worse headaches before they get better, have hair loss, and short term memory loss but since I am young and active, they said it is better and the side effects are less. Also hoping that they will treat the jaw, ribs, sacrum and any other bony parts at the same time but we shall see. I am having treatment at the Stanford South Bay Facility because it is 10 minutes from home versus driving to Stanford main campus which is about 25 minutes. If I do end up needing cyberknife then I’ll have to go to main campus. So Friday I will meet Dr. Marquez who Kate Horst recommended. Although Dr. Marquez will be giving me my treatment, I know that Kate will stay very involved with my care along the way which is great!

Once that is done and I am recovered the fun chemotherapy starts:(. My options are a Clinical Trial or Carboplatin and Abraxane. The trial is showing to be very promising, the only issue is I will be randomized to the trial drug or doctor’s choice (there’s a list) of chemo. The study coordinator should be calling me today or tomorrow to tell me more about it and then I will decide and let everyone know. If anyone cares to read about the trial, link below.

https://clinicaltrials.stanford.edu/browse-all-trials.html.html?ctid=NCT03734029

On a good note, Seth and the gang set up a Zoom Happy Hour tonight so I am really looking forward to that. My mom should be here soon and we are going to try and take a walk to UPS store, I have amazon things to return for like 2 months. Then Mark will be going to a co-workers (Ian) house this afternoon to work for a little so it will be good to have mom here. Feeling optimistic today!!