Christian's Cancer Journey

Monday afternoon (June 27th) we met with the Research Nurse, went over the trial more in depth, and signed consent forms. Here is the basic info we have so far: Christian will need a full CT Scan (chest abdomen pelvis) to use as a baseline for the trial. She also has a brain MRI to insure no mets there (which would be a disqualifier if so I think).  She also has several labs needing to be drawn for several other pre-trial tests.  When she gets her port accessed for the scans, they will draw the labs then. We will be checking the CEA & CA19-9 levels as well. That is all for the pre-trial testing and labs. Her clinical trial start date was originally set for Monday July 18th, pending the tests / scans don't cause an issue. We got a call from Dr. Paluri today (Wednesday June 29th), and he said that the sponsor (Amgen) called him and said that her cohort would be delayed until August 1st. So that is her new tentative start date. Not info we wanted, but it is out of our hands (Amgen

I know it has been a little bit since we have shared anything on here, and there are a lot of questions lingering. I will try to give a sense of where we are at now, so everyone who keeps up with this can at least have an idea. Deciding between actually doing one of the clinical trials (for which we have very little info, and odds not very good with the info we had at hand), and not doing one of them (just make the most out of what time you have) is a very difficult one. A lot of variables to consider.. no right/wrong decision.. limited information.. etc.. which is what makes it so hard.  This is her decision 100%. I am here to support her all the way, for whatever she wants to do. I lay out 23 different scenarios on both sides of the decision so she can have an idea of what things might look like one way or another, and answer any questions she has, but it is her decision. She has to be at peace with whatever she decides. Her family and friends are also here to support her decision. 

We went to the hospital yesterday to get her CT Scans done around 12:00pm. After the scans, we had an hour or so until we were to meet with Dr. Paluri to discuss the results. We stopped by her office and she talked with her co-workers for a little bit. A coincidence I assume, that yesterday (June 6) was also her termination date, so there was some joking around about that.                    We made our way back to the clinic side of the hospital, got checked in, and waited for Dr. Paluri. He went over the results. The tumors in the liver had grown, and multiplied. Same with the lungs. There were no signs that it had spread to anywhere else in the body, so that is something to be thankful for.  There aren't very many options, much less any good ones.  Two of the options are Phase 1 trials, with very little data (tumor response rates, adverse events %, side effects, etc..) because this is a "first in human" trial. That is kind of the point of a Phase 1 trial, to see what h