USC visit and NYC plans - update at botton of first post

Hi Friends,

We have been in So Cal for 4 days now and today **** had his appointment with Dr. Lenz at USC. Dr. Lenz was happy to see **** looking so good, 3 years and 10 months after diagnosis with 3c. He said that **** did amazingly well on the Folfori + Avastin for almost 2 years but that is was time to change the chemo. He recommended Irinotecan, Erbitux and (if insurance will pick it up) continue with Avastin. So, that means no more 5 FU. **** will be happy to see the pump go bye bye. Also, chemo will go back to every 2 weeks instead of every 3 weeks. I am happy to say that **** left the appointment with some hope that he can keep the cancer from spreading and hopes to see it beat back.

One of the things that he did recommend that I thought would be very helpful is that they are recommending probiotics 3 times a day to combat the diarrhea from the Irinotecan. He said that people are almost having no problems once they start on this. If you try it, let us know if it helps.

We were supposed to fly out tomorrow at 8am to NYC to go to Sloan. Our flight has been changed to Wednesday at 10am. We will know more tomorrow. ****'s appointment is on Thursday. It will be interesting to see if the docs come up with the same plan. Also, they are running some more genetics tests to see what works best with his tumor type. I'll let you know how it goes.

So, we are one more day in So Cal with our college daughter and my parents. Our other daughter and my sister-in-law had to evacuate our house 2 nights ago because of the tsunami alert for Hawaii. I am happy to say the tsunami did not materialize in any large way, just 1 foot waves.

Thanks for all your support as we try to find the next steps.

Aloha,
Kathleen

UPDATE: Hello dear friends, (10/31/12)

Here we sit in sunny Southern California and no we are not going to New York. Our flight was cancelled two days in a row and we cannot make it to ****'s appointment. I think what we are going to do is follow the plan that Dr. Lenz proposed and then scan in January and if things are not improving make it out to Sloan. So...... we are enjoying our time out here with our daughter and my parents. We are going to stay in So Cal until Sunday and watch our daughter's 2nd regatta. She is the coxswain on her school's crew team. We are at peace and feel that **** has a good plan. Thank you for all your love and support.

Aloha,
Kathleen