Still around the corner...

For now, we are keeping the Chemo option around the corner.

I never know how to feel coming out of these appointments. Frankly, I hope that Joan will not mind that I say this (Joan is out of town as I write this!) Joan wants to hold this disease at arm's length and I want to kick it in the butt! Well, that is not exactly true.

Perhaps you have heard that Chemotherapy is a dreadful option for reducing the risk of cancer growing in your body. But you have probably also heard that it is a necessary option and even though it is rough, it is often the only option availbable to save your life. So with this conundrum Joan is faced with getting the chemo now or waiting until her symptoms become worse and doing it then. Sort of an Odessian Scylla and Charybdis kind of situation. The two options are both pretty unattractive. (though no sailors were harmed during the typing of this blog.)




Joan had been taking readings of her night sweats to see if the temprature was high enough (100.5) to cause concern. Too many of those high readings would certainly mean chemo. But for the weeks that she religiously kept those readings she was never over 99 degrees, far below the danger zone according to Joan's Oncologist Stephanie Capone - who quite literally has a skeleton in her closet, I have seen it. She dressed it in a gypsy outfit for Halloween.

Seriously the chick has a skeleton in her closet!


The good news for Joan is that the majority of her affected nodes have remained very slow growing. After a review of the latest tests and a thourough going over from Dr. Capone's Physicians Assistant, Leeya Pruitt we were relieved. Only the nodes in her groin area are a little more active. So for now she is able to skip the chemo.

For now.

I am afraid as always that this dreaded "cure" is just around the corner. But Joan

smiles as we leave because she knows that she has pushed her chemo at least three more months away. She was also pretty happy because she knew she was leaving 12 hours after the appointmentfor a week in Cleveland with her brother Jack. There is always something else just around the corner...








Check out Dr. Capone at this web site filled with info and links to cancer stuff.