Well, according to the rumors, we’re going to get to go home tomorrow. However, we might be going home with nutrition bags to keep him on at nights for a little while. We’re not 100% sure how that works yet, hopefully they’ll explain more tomorrow, but he’s officially off of the antibiotics. Either way, we’re just thankful to be going home for Thanksgiving!
http://picasaweb.google.com/HornIT/BackInIowaCity/photo#5135170714358072354 I saw this painting on the 8th floor by the Patient Library the other day and thought it perfectly represented our situation at this stage. A fork in the road and a decision that needs to be made. Do we continue on the path in Iowa City towards stem cell transplants or do we “hang a right” and move towards 3F8 antibody treatments in New York? Both with major pros and ****, both with similar statistics on the outcome, and both with very experienced physicians at the helm.
After much thought and prayer, Lacey and I have officially decided to pursue 3F8 treatments at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. I can’t even begin to go into all of the reasons why we decided this was the best course of action at this point in our journey, but I think we have seen every angle of this decision and felt this was the right move. As you know, the doctors here in Iowa City didn’t want to administer the chemotherapy that Dr. Kushner in New York was prescribing for 3F8 preparation. Their official stance was, “If you want to pursue 3F8 in New York, do all of your treatment in New York.” Dreading the thought of spending weeks in New York just to do something as straightforward as another round of high dose cytoxin chemotherapy, I called Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines and asked them if they would be willing to take direction from Dr. Kushner in New York and administer Eli’s 6th round of chemo for us. They said they’d be happy to as they do it quite often. Obviously this made us (and Dr. Kushner) happy. We hope to start round 6 at Blank next Monday.
We’ll make a quick trip to New York before Christmas after round 6 for testing to determine if a 7th round of chemo is necessary or if we’ll be ready to start 3F8. If we’re ready for 3F8, we’ll return after Christmas for round 1. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunity in the future to explain what a 3F8 round looks like, but the high level overview is that you go in for a 30 minute treatment every day for 5 days, and then come home for 3 weeks. Repeat this for a few months, and if you don’t develop HAMA (human anti-mouse antibody), you move to a 5 days on, 7 weeks off schedule.
Obviously this was a majorly stressful decision, and one that we didn’t take lightly. However, as I was thinking about how big of a decision it was, I had this thought. “You know, I should make a joke on the CarePage that we just decided to flip a coin because it didn’t really matter which one we picked because statistically they are both equal in their effectiveness.” Then I immediately had a thought of God saying, “Aaron, that’s exactly what I want you to learn in this. It doesn’t matter what you pick, not because of the statistics, but because I can use either option to heal Eli.” While I have too much of a “High C” behavioral tendency to let that thought steer any of my final decisions, it definitely helped me give the weight of the stress of the decision over to God. I’m not as important as I like to think I am sometimes. No matter what we choose, God still has things under His control.
There’s more if you click Next to see the second post for today…