Update on my Mom After Frontline Treatment (09/11/17)

Hi everyone,

It's been a while yet again, but I just wanted to give an update on my mom's condition and make a few comments on her completed treatment journey (as of 08/21/17!).

I can't believe it's been more than a year since my mom was first diagnosed with UPSC, initially staged at IIIC1 and then later upgraded to IIIC2. This year for us has been fraught with a rollercoaster of ups and downs, the experiencing of so much negative emotions and heartache. However, during this, we also experienced the positive feeling of unity and gratefulness as we relied heavily on the help and fervent prayers of our friends and family.

I wanted to include the lovely people on this board who have been such a blessing and a great help to us during our journey during my mom's difficult time from the start of her initial diagnosis to her hysterectomy, then to her second surgery, to the bad news of her upgraded diagnosis, to her prolonged radiation treatment, to the many cancelled chemo sessions due to her low WBC counts, and finally, to the end of her treatment.

It's been a long difficult ride, but I'm grateful that after about 9 months of prolonged frontline treatments, my mom is finally able to rest and recuperate, and hopefully regrow back her hair and eyebrows! Her last chemo session was in late August and her final neupogen shots were in late August/early September.

However, at this point, I'm still restless and I feel like I'm missing something important. The end of her treatment feels anticlimatic. There were no CT/PET scans taken afterwards, no blood tests, nothing to assure us that my mom is NED or anything. It just seems as if things just petered off and we've been left bereft and uncertain. I've asked about follow-up scans and bloodtests and it seems that they won't issue those tests until near the end of the year. Is that normal for everyone?

At this moment, I'm still trying to see if there is any doctor who will consider prescribing her metformin, which I understand is a drug that is used for those with PCOS, high BS, or obesity or diabetes, but I am having no luck at the moment. My mom's one of those stubborn picky-eaters who refuses to change her diet radically. She loves her bread, her rice, and all those starchy carbs with simple sugars. I'm worried that the sugar from these foods will ultimately feed whatever cancer cell(s) that may or may not still be hiding in her body. I would feel more confident if she had some pre-emptive medication that could help control her sugar intake, but since her BS is still in the normal range and since she has no diabetes nor is she overweight, the metformin may be a no-go for her.

Aside from her 3-month checkups with her surgical oncologist as well as the periodical CT scans/blood tests, we are praying that this is it. We don't know know what tomorow will bring, but from this journey, we've learned to cope, to not take things for granted, and to just live one day at a time and be happy with what we have.

Thank you everyone. We're so very grateful.

Love,
Rebecca