In keeping with the MD Anderson fiasco-way of doing business, Dr. Kurzrock was roughly two hours late for Maggie’s 11:00AM appointment.  And, of course, she came with her clipboard touting entourage.  They dialed me in via speaker so I could virtually participate in the discussion.  Here’s my report. Continue reading More Details from MDA →

The treatment has been working, sort of.  Some of her tumors have shrunk while others have grown.  Dr. Kurzrock wants to switch to a new experimental treatment that works in a very different way to attack the tumors.  The bad news is that the new treatment will require her to be in Houston twice a week.  That’s pretty tough.  I’ll fill in more details later.  Right now, I gotta go eat some lunch.

The visit to The Wizards has thus far been amazingly consistent with the others, filled with unpleasantries.  Maggie, of course, retains her indelible spirit far past the point where I’m fairly certain I would have passed out.  In the sarcastic words of Martha May, ah, good times. Continue reading MD Anderson Update →

It’s been a week since I last posted.  I can’t look back on anything particularly remarkable that’s happened.  Most notable, Maggie is definitely having much less nausea.  Hurray for that!  We’ve been much more disciplined about taking the preventative nausea meds on time so that might be it.  Or the new IV pain med fyntenal is less rough on the stomach.  Or the magic steel stomach fairies came down one night and lined her stomach with unwavering stability.  Who knows?  But the break in vomiting episodes is a welcome change.  She’s been pain-free now, too, for at least the last week.  That’s a wonderful relief that could mean a myriad of things.  But the lack of crises has allowed something else to pop up unexpectedly – sadness.  We’re both challenged daily now and it’s surprising just how easy it is to cry.  It’s also surprising how frequent it can happen.  But we try not to fight with it and, rather, just let it run its course. Continue reading Doing Ok →

Maggie and her mom arrived about 4PM-ish and Maggie looked bad. She barely slurped upstairs into the bathtub where she sat silently for maybe two hours. Next, bed rest. I don’t think she got out of bed until well past 6PM. We camped out in front of the TV for the evening. It was relaxing but not entirely pleasant. She was feeling pretty foul and I wasn’t feeling too hot myself for some reason. But despite how bad either of us felt, it sure was nice to look across the couch and see her face. Continue reading Hurray, Maggie is home! →

All Tuesday night there were numerous interruptions, someone came in about every 30 minutes, then around 7am Wednesday a crew arrived to take Maggie to her procedure.  There were five of us walking together down the hall, riding in elevators, and rolling across a sky bridge above the 2nd floor atrium.  It felt like a parade.  Continue reading MDA #2 – The Rest of the Week →

Maggie comes home tomorrow. It’s been a rough trip on her and me. Tough for her because, well, it’s tough what she’s going through. Tough on me because I’m too far away to comfort her during times when she needs it most. Continue reading Headed Home Tomorrow →

Today went very smoothly. Maggie breezed through her morning appointments and got a room by 11:45pm. She has learned to ‘work’ the MD Anderson system. Continue reading Day One of Round Two @ MDAnderson →

Our little experiment to find the most appropriate dosage of pain meds worked.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t zero.  It’s somewhere around 0.5 mg/hr.  Hey, that’s a significant amount less than the 1.3 mg/hr we were suckin’ down just week before last!  We take that to mean that the treatment is working, by darned.  And next week’s treatment means more workin’ will be happening. Continue reading Found the Dose →

All is stable at the Weaver Household.  At least stable as compared to the last few months.  Looking back since October 17th, the day Dr. Loukas told us that the chemo treatments were failing to keep the tumors in check, I realized we’d spent nearly 100% of our time dealing with issues associated with treatment.  November all but disappeared on us.  But, today, she’s stable.  In fact we actually lowered her pain dosage down yet again.  As of now it’s at 0.7 mg/hr (vs. 1.3 mg/hr when we went to MD Anderson.)  Nausea, however, continues to be a real problem. Continue reading Steady as She Goes →