Monday, June 13, 2011

-breaktime!-

Helllooooo -

We are officially on break! Hooray!

Today we went over to IU as usual and Kurtis got his labs drawn.  We then waited for the results to see if he needed to get any potassium or magnesium, and it turned out that he did need that mag, so we hung out for another couple hours.  We found out that we're free - FREE - for a few days while Kurtis' body is on a break.  We both feel pretty excited about having a few days off.  During the week when you're working - or going to school - there is always the weekend to look forward to.  Get through five days, get two off.  Cancer doesn't work like that.  Work for a month, get three days off - haha. 

I think we're going to get in a paddle boat on the canal sometime as well as take a little trip down to Louisville, KY which is only a few hours away.  If nothing else, it will be nice to hang out without HAVING to head downtown to IU. 

On Friday, we'll start back up again.  Kurtis and I will head in to floor five (where he gets all of his stuff done) and have labs drawn.  Next, we'll head over to the cancer center to meet with Dr. Hanna who is our oncologist here.  I may have said this before, but your doc at home, Dr. Marschke, has been absolutely FANTASTIC about working with the folks out here.  So, wayyy back in December when we made our first journey out here, we met with Dr. Hanna for the first time.  Since then, he's been working with Dr. Einhorn out here and helping us make sure that the cancer is kicked out of Kurtis' body!  I haven't seen him since Kurtis' surgery (I wasn't here yet when he met with Dr. Hanna at the start of this treatment) so it will be nice to see him again.

So, everything is on track and Kurtis is looking forward to starting the chemo, round two, on Friday.  Neither of us are really excited about him going through the process again since it is rough ... hard on him and hard for me to see him like that ... but we are excited about getting this stuff taken care of and heading back home to spend the other half of the summer in good old FoCo :)

As with every Monday, today was "tumor marker day"  where they test the tumor markers along with the other blood counts.  Last night, Kurtis and I played "guess the HCG" count" game.  At times through the adventure of cancer, we've played this game.  Other times, the count number seems too important and cancer to be joking around or playing games.  Anyway, his last count was around 1,000 which, as many of you know, is still quite high.  We've learned throughout our time with this disease that the closer we get to normal (1) the longer it seems to take. 

So, in the midst of our evening, we made guesses - both landing somewhere in between five and six hundred.

Today, the results came back.  They were not what we expected...at all.  Kurtis' HCG is now at 173!!  That's right!

173!

WooHOO!

So, to celebrate, I made insanely good hamburgers (bacon, cheddar, avocado, cream cheese mix...yea, you can stop drooling later) and mini cupcakes.  We had a great evening - Kurtis watching some TV and me diving headfirst into a pile of American Revolution textbooks in preparation for the class I'm teaching next year.

Last, but not least - today's Indiana positives (and one for yesterday)...
5. There are parts of rural America we would have never seen.  Yesterday's trip out to Parke County was a nice snapshot into midwestern farm country which included beautiful scenery and some big red barns.
6. The Camp Bow Wow here is FANTASTIC.  All of the workers are kind and take great care of Chauncey.  He is always insanely excited to go and tired from playing when I pick him up.  We're thankful for such a great place and fantastic people to take care of our pup. :)

That's all for now!
Love to all!

Liz

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