Birthday, Holiday Weekend, Labs, CEA Level Results

We have a lot to catch up on. I will try to hit the main points without being too drawn out.

Christian's birthday was Friday May 27th, which also happened to be Memorial Day weekend.
We had a camping trip booked in Asheville, NC for that weekend. Jen, Steven, and Annabell also came and were in the spot beside us. So we left Friday afternoon, got setup at our site, and went to downtown for her birthday. We ate some really good Sushi at Wasabi and had some awesome desserts at Crave.

 Saturday morning we went to the city market and bought some local goods (bakery items, drinks, etc.) and walked around for a bit. The rest of the trip was spent at the campground riding the golf cart, hanging in hammocks, and just relaxing. 

Annabell wanted to rent the little 4-seater pedal bike for 30 minutes, so we did that and took turns driving her around on it. It was pretty fun.

We came home yesterday (Monday, Memorial Day) and relaxed before bed. Funny how you can't wait to leave home to go on vacation, and then you can't wait to be back home haha. They each have their place I suppose. We had a great trip and it was a lot of fun.

Now, down to the nitty gritty.. 

On this regimen (Cabo & Durva) Christian has handled it very well with minimal side effects presenting until just recently (past few weeks). The recent side effect has been mainly fatigue. She gets tired easier than normal, and has to sit down to rest for a little bit before proceeding with whatever she had been doing. Some days is a little more drastic than others. Some days she is pretty much 100% fine all day. 

We find out a little later on in this post that her platelets are low, and that may part of the cause as well.

Dr. Paluri had called late last week and said he wanted to go ahead and check her labs, along with the tumor markers (CEA & CA19-9) this week (instead of waiting until June 6th as we originally had planned). He did not have an alarming reason for this or anything, it has just already been long enough after the 2nd immunotherapy infusion to determine if this regimen is working or not. 

So we went to the hospital today, and had her blood drawn for those test. We did not have a meeting with him, or anything else scheduled, so other than waiting it was a quick trip.

The CBC came back quickly, and Dr. Paluri called to talk about that.

He said that her platelets and her white blood count are both pretty low. He said we were still waiting for the CEA & CA19-9 tumor marker numbers, but that he wanted to go ahead and say pause the daily chemo pill for at least a week to give her platelets and white blood count time to recover regardless.

Later this evening he called with the tumor marker numbers.

Unfortunately, the CEA & CA-19-9 have risen again. 

The CEA is now 123.1. It was 72.3 on April 11th. This tells us that the Cabo & Durva regimen is not being effective. This is very unfortunate for so many reasons that I will not get into right now. 

Since the marker levels have increased over the past couple months after trying the different regimens, we need to get fresh CT Scans to re-evaluate where we are at currently from a size & imaging standpoint. The last scan was on April 11th. 

Dr. Paluri is trying to get the scans scheduled for next week (no date/time confirmed yet).

Beyond that, there is not a lot to talk about right now. We will be meeting with him to discuss the scan results of course, and at that time, we will be discussing the next steps on the path forward as well.

This is a serious blow. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers as she could really use a miracle right now. Thanks to everyone for all of the support.