Numbing Numbers

Rebecca’s daily health report has been mixed for the past three weeks. She doesn’t have the horrible nausea and terrible headaches, but she does have worsening neuropathy — numbness in her fingers and feet — along with abdominal pain, particularly when she takes deep breaths. She also has some mild nausea and often feels tired, so she can’t be up and about for more than four or five hours at a time. We got a prescription today for stronger and longer acting pain meds (oxycontin) which could make a big difference.

Today was supposed to bring another infusion of Avastin as well, but things don’t always (or maybe never) go according to plan. At the end of a long wait and then a long talk with the oncologist about Rebecca’s options for the coming weeks and months, we got blood counts back and learned that the liver enzymes were elevated. It is conceivable that this is due to the Tarceva, but we have to find out whether it is actually indicating that the tumors are progressing. If the latter, we’ll have to start our third line of strong chemotherapy quickly. We’ll get more info tomorrow in the form of tumor marker levels from that same blood draw, so we’ll post another blog entry tomorrow or Thursday.

On the brighter side, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving break. Jacob was home; we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner/evening with Jon, Barb, Anelle, and Audrey (Barb’s mom); and we had a nice two-day visit from Yvette. Having Jacob and Anelle in town was particularly nice for Yvonne.