Friday 10/8

this morning has been busy with visitors. doctor visitors.  Craigs billyrubin (sp?) went down .5 which is really not good enough but we are hopeful that it will continue to go down. He was so tired after the surgeon came in and another doc came in so he was resting but not in pain. he is much better spirits today. his sense of humor is back which is refreshing. (never thought that i would miss it but man he is not the same without the corny jokes in between).

Okay so the onocologist came as he was dozing in and out. we know (and kinda knew along) that is stage 4 Pancreatic cancer.

They are looking at a clinical trail here in Louisville but his billyrubn has to go down before we can do anything.  unlike other cancers we dont have to rush into starting chemo today or even next week. So we have time to make some decsions. we are talking about going to TX to MD Anderson to see what they have to offer. Everyone raves about the success there and how they treat the patients. We need to make a decsion probably over the weekend if we are going to TX. we have an appointment with the onocologist monday that is doing the clinical trail here and he will check the billyrubin count then and get his opinion on MD Anderson too.

surgery is not an option to even discuss until wayyyy down the line and maybe not even then. the goal is partial remission and shrink the cancer by 50% and then complete remission for the mass to not show up on the CT scan. there is no cure for this and he will always have cancer but plenty of people have cancer and live normal lives. we have to find ways to manage it and keep it in check.

ummm... what else did she say...

his tumor marker is 219ish and the goal is 30s. the 1000s are bad bad bad.

needs to gain some weight back and not lose any more.

we probably wont find anybody in our age group going through this in support group so we should sign up for under 40 support groups for cancer in general rather than Pan. cancer.

i think that is about it....i think she is coming back.

we hope to be leaving the hospital today. craig is sleeping now and he is trying to take the pain meds orally rather than IV so we can see if he can tolerate them at home.

we will  take it day it day by day. tomorrow is hopefully soccer and that is about it. sunday is hopefully church and that is about it. and monday is the onocologist. rest in between.

we wont have visitors at home. the girls havent seen him for more than an hour for over a week. he will be spending time with them.


so here are the facts:

Pancreatic cancer stage 4 (b/c is it in the liver)

and our God is bigger than this.