Deb's Update: November 25th, 2007

Hi All,

Hope you all had a festive yet restful Thanksgiving! My Thanksgiving was great, but I will start with the medical stuff I have been through since the last blog update...

Last Tuesday I went to see Dr. Ahn (my radiation oncologist here in Thousand Oaks). I sure did have lots of questions about what my best option would be in terms of Gamma Knife vs. Stereotactic RT. Apparently, he had several discussions with UCLA to see what they felt I could have done in terms of RT. They are neuro-oncologists so they are not as keen on RT obviously.... but they knew I am interested in anything to beat this cancer to death!!! After several conversations, Dr. Ahn and Dr. Lai came to an agreement that RT would be okay but UCLA did not want Gamma Knife or stereotactic RT. They did say that the same dose of centigrays would be acceptable, but they wanted it to be done over several weeks instead of 1 to 5 days. Apparently I would have not been allowed on their clinical trials if I did the quick Gamma Knife or Stereotactic RT.

Of course, Dr. Ahn had to see the recent MRI to see exactly where the location of the tumor is. He needed to obviously compare it to the graph of exactly where they radiated me the last time to see if I was even able to get RT. So, it turned out to be kind of cool to see my brain on several computer screens that! First computer was my CT scan which was done pre-RT last December, the second computer was the graph which shows the exact area that was radiated last Dec/January and the third computer was the latest MRI. There was a slight light at the end of the tunnel when I heard that the area where the new recurrent tumor was WAS NOT radiated last year (if it received any RT last year, it was just a dusting) !!!! There was a God that day :-)

So, thankfully, I am able to get more RT (not sure what the dose will be yet) to a decent sized section of my frontal lobe just in case that damned dot from the right side of the frontal lobe would want to come back. I was honestly relieved that RT was an option since I didn't want chemo to be the only thing I could do. I sure hope that I can continue to sing and dance even after getting the frontal lobe radiated!!! You all know how much I love doing that :-)

Dr. Ahn and I discussed when I could start the RT. Because he said that it takes them about 2 weeks to get everything set up and graphed, we came to the conclusion that I would start the RT after the Dec 26th MRI (probably right after the New Years Day). I sure don't want to get RT when I am taking the CCNU chemo for several reasons: First, I didn't want to get radiated during the time when my blood counts are at their lowest and second, I want to see if the CCNU chemo is actually working. I obviously wouldn't want to go back on CCNU if it never worked to begin with.

In a bitter sweet kind of way, all of his radiation technicians were very happy to see me! I guess I must have made them laugh the last time I was radiated because I so upbeat about everything even though they are actually radiating me! I guess it is confirmed that I AM crazy, huh?

This Tuesday (the 27th) I'm off to Dr. Ahn's office to get a CT scan done so they can plan on the exact area that they will radiate. In addition, they will build my lovely mask so they can strap me down on the table again. Lovely, huh? I wonder if this time I should keep the mask and wear in on Halloween next year to be some sort of ax-murderer person like I always saw in scary movies when I was a kid!!! That's an option too, huh?

I got Reiki done last Tuesday night... Mick is such a wonderful guy that literally has a positive visualization about my brain! Weird, huh? I'm sure his visualization is different than mine... These days my visualization is that my brain is plump, pink and plush... looks a little slippery, but it sure is shiny and happy! I used to think that visualization was sort of wacky, but I'll do anything I can to get rid of this ugly tumor :-) I will continue to do Reiki weekly when I am going through this chemo and the upcoming RT. Enough discussion about brains so it's time to move on to "normal life" stuff!

Thanksgiving was much happier this year than last... and you're right Mollie, I sure did look better! I probably should have taken a picture of myself and did a before and after photo comparison on this blog site :-) I was originally going to go up to San Fran to see Ant and Paul for Thanksgiving, but thankfully they were kind enough to come here to celebrate with me in my own environment. Kim also decided to spend her Thanksgiving with me instead of her family. The support from both Kim and Ant is always amazing, so of course I couldn't say 'no' to either of them when they wanted to come here.

They did everything from preparing and cooking the entire Thanksgiving meal to cleaning up afterward. We also all decided it would be a nice thing to set up Christmas tree (a fake one of course) and to decorate my house with all of my Christmas items (from candles to napkins). I don't have that much, but it felt good to see it all around the house. The one catch was when we tried to get my fake tree out of the garage, low and behold it was not mine anymore..... it belonged to RATS!!! Yup, you heard it correctly, RATS! So, I had to throw it out and buy another fake tree. It all turned out okay once everything was done... I just thought I'd mention my newest pets for your reading pleasure!!!

All is still going well with Charlie these days... he seems to be coming more and more attached to me. That's definitely a good thing! Today's discussion was about Christmas and he wanted a list of what I wanted... Of course I always want small easy things like pajamas, maybe some new sheets, a sweater would be good, or some yoga clothes... nothing major. He was the one that thought it was too cheap so he wanted me to think of other things... So, I added a kitchen counter, a garage door, and a TV!!! We'll have to see what happens. The one scary things is that he can't seem to figure out what he needs! He buys whatever he needs so he doesn't seem to think that me buying him a spa treatment massage or getting him some golf lessons would be necessary! So, put on your Christmas gift hats folks... I'll need some advice on what to get a metro-sexual man (he does more spa treatments than I do!!!). Maybe just a weekend trip to Catalina or Santa Barbara to stay at a Bed & Breakfast???

That's it for now... time for me to get some ZZZZZZZZZZs!

From the bottom of my heart, I continue to thank you for all of your support! It means so much to me...

Love Ya, Debbie