Amazing Journey

Just a week ago, my right side was giving me bad pain, my feet hurt so bad that I had to use two canes and even then had to try to walk on the instep of the foot as much as possible, and my BMs burned something fierce. After they "done did ripped my guts out" on Saturday morning all of those symptoms have disappeared. My onc, nurses and occupational therapist have all commented that I look much better and the expression of constant pain is gone from my face. I was also concerned that my CEA had jumped over six weeks from 216 to 444 and according to the CT Scan on Friday, the tumors in my liver have indeed grown by a small amount I spoke with my onc today and he's going to try to get an auth from the insurance company to start me on Zaltrap along with the Vectibix.

I'm going to call my patient navigator at my insurance company tomorrow and ask her to do what she can to get the auth to go through. I'm also going to see if she can try to get the company to stop locking horns with my onc when he puts in a quarterly request for a PET. Without the scan in August, I have no idea how long or how sick I would have become before the pneumonia was dx'd. And the I'd still have appendicitis getting worse every day if it had been for the CT on Friday. It's not an exaggeration to say that either one of those could easily have proven fatal lacking those scans. In both incidents, I did not have what I thought were classic symptoms. I'm even joking now that if I have a heart attack I'll probably have the symptoms manifest as an ingrown toenail!

I want to add somethings that happened this morning. When I walked into the cancer center for my appointment this morning one of the receptionists said, "Ray, what are you doing up and a bout?" I replied "I gots to have my drugs, baby! I needs my fix!" Then the onc told me that the infusion team was asking if my treatment was going to be cancelled today and he told them, "anyone but Ray I'd say yes."

Thanks and God Bless you all for your prayers and good thoughts!

Ray/Doc