Hello, it’s been a while.  Almost a month since the last time I wrote a post.  The reason is a good thing. We’ve just been over here living life.  Mom was getting chemo once every 3 weeks and other than that we’ve just been enjoying summer.  Mom has been making up for last summer.  Watering her flowers without intense amounts of pain and going on vacation.  We don’t talk about cancer or death like we were.  But things are starting again or ending, I suppose.  All depends what the scan says.

Today mom will have her final chemo for this course.  This could potentially be her last chemo for a very long time but that all depends on the scan.  Today she met with her oncologist and here is the game plan.  Chemo today, scan next week and an appointment to go over the scan on July 3^rd.  Something about seeing the words scan next week makes my stomach turn.  I guess it’s because I know how we all get after a CT scan and during the waiting period.  Hoping for good results and overanalyzing how we will react if it’s bad news.  It’s been a rollercoaster and this is just how we are programmed at this point.

So if the scan is clear mom will start a drug called a PARP inhibitor.  It is a pill she will take until the end of time.  The PARP inhibitor is a drug that treats cancer.  Specifically patients with BRCA mutations like mom.  It makes the cancer unstable so it can’t grow.  It doesn’t extend a person’s life but extends progression free survival.  Progression free survival is the amount of time a person is living without their cancer growing and spreading.  The downside to these drugs is that over time the cancer gets smart and figures out a way around the drug (a secondary mutation) and then you need to find a new drug because the current one becomes ineffective.  I’m not saying this to be a downer.  Just scientifically this is how these drugs work.

So two weeks of limbo and then some answers and a plan going forward.  As always thank you all for your love and prayers and support throughout this insane year!