Update March 17, 2021

 [Amendment to March 13, 2021 post]

Hi again friends, i meant to amend this post much earlier but the day has just gotten away from me. 

 

Amanda had a phone appointment with her medical oncologist this morning. This doctor was somewhat less optimistic than her radiation oncologist, but she did echo that if it had to be somewhere, the bones is the best place for it to be. Again, best worst diagnosis. Cancer is very slow-growing in the bones, and bones respond very well to radiation. They have 3 cancer drugs they're going to be starting her on, including the new drugs mentioned previously by the radiation oncologist, which it turns out are not more chemo drugs. She will also be on 2 supplements aimed at building bones and preventing osteoporosis. She may be on all of these for the rest of her life. Also, these carry their own less-than-ideal potential side effects, including possible osteonecrosis of the jaw, which is frankly horrifying. On the plus side, throughout these treatments, there will be more monitoring and surveillance on the progress of the drugs, to make sure everything is working as it's supposed to.

 

She needs to get some testing and other consultation done before she can start the new regimen, and there will be delays while we wait for insurance to authorize everything. Since it's "slow-growing" in the bones, they don't foresee the wait being a big issue, like it was with the breast tumor previously. Therefore, this does not impact our plans to visit Wisconsin. We're still finalizing the itinerary, i'll make a big post about all that soon, but the dates are set. We're leaving LA on March 23 and need to be back April 12. So, we are looking forward to seeing as many of you as we can in between those dates!

 

Sorry i haven't replied to any of the comments on this post or all of the PMs and texts i've received. These last couple weeks we have been overwhelmed with the weight of all of this. On Monday we tried playing video games and i just. Could not. I collapsed into a ball and held her and could not get myself to focus or do literally anything all day. I'm back up and running now but it's still difficult to concentrate on anything else. Please bear with me, i'm finding it especially hard to people.