Well, I have some good news! They are stopping mom's chemo for now. Her CA125 (ovarian cancer indicator) has stabilized which indicates that her cancer is not growing right now. They are going to let her stop the chemo for now. She will go back in June for a CT scan and blood work to see where she is then. Until then, she is free from having to go to the doctor! w00t!

The past couple of months have been a little rough on her. She's been battling almost constant exhaustion so has been sleeping most of the time. However, they let her skip her chemo 3 weeks ago because of a trip that was planned. My parents and oldest brother and sister-in-law took a trip to Washington DC. Mom and dad stayed with some old friends they haven't seen in 25 years. They had a WONDERFUL time! I wish I could have gone with them.

Mom is starting to get the spring back in her step now. She's not sleeping as much as she was and is starting to regain some of her energy. All of this makes the rest of us feel better, too. :)

Unless something changes between now and then, I will update again in June and let you know what happens with the CT scan & blood work.

~~Cheri

Sorry for not updating for a while. Mom is doing okay. The chemo is starting to take it's toll on her now. She stays tired and pretty nauseous most of the time. We are hoping that they will give her 2 weeks off between treatment cycles now instead of just 1 so that she'll have more time to recover her strength between treatments. She still has an amazingly positive attitude about everything fueled on by the fact that her CA125 continues to go down. The drop wasn't as drastic this time as it was last time they checked it, but it still came down a point or two. That means the chemo is still working on the cancer.

Mom & dad are taking a trip in April with Jimbo & Mindy. They're going to stay in Virginia with some old military friends of my parents. Mom is REALLY looking forward to this trip!

Mom just had her latest check-up with her oncologist before this round of treatments. Her CA-125 is continuing to drop which means that the chemo IS working. For now, he doesn't foresee needing to do a CT scan on her unless her CA-125 goes up or her tests show decreased kidney functions. Woo Hoo!!! :D

Mom continues to amaze me. I can't keep up with her. :) She has had a couple of days each treatment cycle where she hasn't felt well and stayed home and rested. Other than that, she is continuing to do everything she did before she began chemo again. Exercise class 2-3 times a week. Yoga 2-3 times a week. Church 3 times a week. Card-playing with her friends 2 nights a week. Visiting the home-bound 1 day a week. Clay class once a week. In between all of those things, she is always working on her projects. :) She has such an amazing attitude about life and living it to the fullest. She is a constant inspiration to me and I thank God for blessing me with her.

Thanks for your continued thoughts and prayers. They really do help, especially on the bad days.

~~Cheri

Mom had her chemo today. So far she's feeling normal. They started her on Avastin along with Gemzar and she'll have another Gemzar treatment the day after Christmas. They way a nurse explained it to her, the Avastin is a targeted medicine that goes directly to the cancer cells and cuts off the blood supply to them. It allows the Gemzar then to be able to travel directly into the cancer cells to kill them. We are extremely hopeful from the success that Avastin has been having in trials. We will just have to see how she does over the next few days to see if she's going to have any really bad side effects from either of the drugs. We are praying that she won't. :) Let's hope our Christmas miracle continues!!

We received some great news today about mom. The insurance company has agreed to pay for her to receive the trial cancer drug. She will start it on Wednesday!! This drug has been very effective in clinical trials so we are extremely excited about this news!!

I will let y'all know how she's doing after her treatment. :)

Mom had her appointment with the oncologist today. He wants to do a CT scan to see where she is now and see if the chemo has been effective at all so far. They are going to try to get her in either tomorrow or Friday. Once they see the results, then they'll decide whether more chemo will be tried.

YAY for no chemo right before Thanksgiving! Boo for not knowing the CT results before Thanksgiving!

Keep praying y'all!!

Mom is doing much better this week. She has hit manic mode, though, since her crafts open house starts Friday. It is total insanity around her house right now.

She is scheduled to have chemo next Tuesday, but we don't know what chemo drugs they will be using this time around so we are facing a bit of the unknown next week just in time for Thanksgiving.

Well, mom isn't doing so great. She started having really bad nausea Saturday evening, which continued all day Sunday. She has pretty much been in bed since Saturday night. Unfortunately, my dad has managed to give her whatever respiratory illness he's had for the past few days so she is sick in addition to the chemo side effects. She's pissed that she's sick because she has so much to do before her craft show in a couple of weeks. :( Her oncologist was in surgery this morning, but his nurse is supposed to check with him when he gets back to the office to see if mom needs to come in because of the respiratory thing. Daddy called this morning and managed to get her prescription approved for the anti-nausea medicine that works best for her. They had tried to fill it on Saturday, but the pharmacy said they couldn't fill it until the 24th. grrrrr

So that's where we are now with mom. Her nausea doesn't seem to be as severe today, which is good. Now to get her over the respiratory thing she has...

I talked to mom a few minutes ago and they've let her go home finally. She sounds normal now. She was pretty groggy earlier when I spoke with her. She will get to continue with chemo, but we just aren't sure what chemo drugs they will be giving her now that Taxol and Carboplatin are off the table for her.

So we should be good to go. She has to keep Benadryl close by for the rest of the day in case she starts reacting again, but she should be fine. :)

Thanks everyone!

Mom went in this morning for her latest treatment. When I hadn't heard from her by lunchtime, I called the cell phone. She sounded really groggy when she answered. She's had an allergic reaction to the chemo. Her chest started feeling tight, her throat started feeling like she had really bad indigestion, so they immediately stopped the chemo and injected her with Benadryl in her IV. We aren't sure yet what this is going to mean for the future. She will have to meet with her doctor again to discuss whether different chemos might be an option or not. If not, then chemo may no longer be an option for her. I will post more when I know more.

Thanks for all of your prayers. We love you!

Well, mom has been doing great after her latest treatment. She had a lot of nausea and tiredness on Monday, but other than that, she's not had any problems. She's still going to exercise class, yoga class, clay class, church, and playing cards with her church friends twice a week. :)

We are all getting ready to head to Mississippi next week for the Howell reunion. It's going to be lots of fun and we'll have lots of little ones around to spoil like crazy! I can't wait!

One of my really good friends made mom a couple of knit hats to help keep her head warm now that she's bald. I took a couple of pictures of mom wearing them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55045863@N00/2970442512/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55045863@N00/2969599529

Mom is doing REALLY well after her treatment today. When she went in to see the oncologist, she mentioned that her fingers have been numb. He changed her chemo and is no longer giving her Taxol, which is the chemo med that made her so sick. Now she is just taking Carboplatin. It only takes about an hour and a half for the treatment and the bad effects of exhaustion and stuff shouldn't happen until after she's had several treatments of it. She also doesn't have to take the megadoses of steroids for this drug. She is taking oral steroids, but not a really high dose. It looks like she will be feeling good for quite a while now. :)

Thank you all for your continued prayers!

Mom went in this morning to have a permanent port put in so that they don't have to keep sticking her veins in order to draw blood or give injections or fluids. It took a bit longer than I was expecting so I was a little worried, but Jimbo called and said everything went fine. They are waiting now to see her oncologist to make sure that her blood counts are high enough for her to receive the treatment she is scheduled for today. I'll keep y'all posted!

Mom is doing better this evening. The E.R. doctor and her cancer doctor's nurse both agree about what caused mom to get so sick. The antibiotic they gave her way back in May for her bout with food poisoning apparently can cause a particular bacteria in your intestinal tract to grow. When they gave her the megadoses of steroids last week with her chemotherapy, it caused the bacteria to have a party in her intestines and have a bunch of children. They prescribed her another antibiotic that treats just this specific bacteria. She is still pretty worn out from her ordeal, but she is feeling better. I took off this afternoon so that I was able to do some things for mom & dad. Jimbo & Mindy came up this morning and stayed until early afternoon and Keith came up to spend his lunch hour with mom. So we ended up having a great impromptu family visit which I think picked up mom's spirits immensely. :) So that's where we are right now. I will keep everyone posted!

Well, the chemo effects hit full force yesterday. Daddy had to call 911 this morning around 3 because my mom had been sick and having constant explosive diarrhea. They gave her 2 liters of IV fluids, along with a double dose of Zofran and a shot of Decadron. They finally released her a little after 7 this morning with prescriptions for Zofran and Flagil. She was able to eat a little bit when they got home and is now sleeping. She will call her doctor when she wakes up to let them know what happened.

Daddy has asked that you call on the cell phone today if you want to call them since the house phone might wake up mom. She hasn't slept much since her chemo last Thursday and really needs the rest.

Much love to you all and thanks for your prayers.

Mom is continuing to do pretty well. She's made it to exercise and yoga classes so far this week. The steroids kept her feeling normal until last night. She's a little wiped out today from being up most of the night from intestinal problems caused by the chemo, but other than that is feeling good. She continues to amaze me with her attitude and how great she's doing this time around so far.

Mom's first chemo treatment went well. She is still feeling great, but is not sleeping because of the steroids they have her on right now. She and daddy have gone to play cards with their friends from church tonight. I am truly wondering if she'll just breeze through her chemo treatments since she has such a great attitude and so many reasons to not just give in and sleep all day on the days she isn't feeling her best.

She is really looking forward to the Howell reunion next month. She has even agreed to ride with Jimbo and sleep in his back seat of his SUV if she gets too tired on the trip.

Thanks for the continued prayers!

One of my friends made a beautiful angel for me and mom. She posted it to a community here on livejournal that was begun by some of my friends after reading the article about my mom and her Angels of Hope. Here is the link to the entry in the Angels of Hope community. The angel is gorgeous and I can't wait to see it hanging on mom's wall.

As for mom, she's been "nesting." She spent most of today cooking food to put in the freezer for those days when she doesn't feel well enough to cook. Other than that, she's just ready to get the chemo started in hopes of getting rid of the cancer again. She got a fortune in her fortune cookie the other day that was pretty fitting. "If at first you succeed, try again with something harder."

Mom just called me with the verdict. Surgery is not an option at this time because one of the tumors is growing in such a way that the doctor would only be able to remove part of it. He said it's not worthwhile to do surgery unless he can remove all of it. He gave mom the option of a) no chemo (he followed this up by saying that he knows that isn't really an option she will consider lol) and b) begin chemo next week. So mom will begin chemo next week. It is the bad chemo that she ended with during her first round with chemo so she will begin losing her hair almost immediately and it will make her very ill. However, she took her calendar with her and it looks like her good weeks will fall during the Howell reunion and the weekend she does her craft show at the house.

I will try to remember more of what she said later, but for now I must get back to work. If one of my brothers happens to stop by here, I hope that they will fill in some more of the details that I may have left out.

So here we are almost a year later. We have the results of the latest CT scan and from our reading of it, it looks like we're in for some major changes in the next few months. As I stated in a previous post, this journal will be a way for family and friends out of town to keep up with mom and how things are going in her ongoing battle with ovarian cancer. I know that lots of people are using Caringbridge sites for this, but since I am more familiar with livejournal, I chose to use this forum. I will work on setting it up so that updates here will update to Daddy's Facebook page so that some can track the updates that way.

Many thanks to my wonderful friend Andy aka speakerwiggin for his help in making the header for the journal using one of my favorite pictures of mom and adding his own touches. I think it's uncanny that he chose the footprints in the sand picture as the background for the picture. Please pass this website on to family and friends so that they can keep up with mom.

As always, we covet your prayers for mom.