Aaahhhh, back to real life :)

As much as I enjoy the holidays, all the festivities, family and food, the quiet of early January is intoxicating! I've been soooo relaxed (aka lazy) this week. I'm loving it :)

I've finally heard back from both Kaiser and UCSF about getting enrolled in a couple clinical trials. It was really looking like I wasn't going to be able to do the first trial, let's call it Trial A, because they needed to find my original pathology slide, from my 2002 biopsy, that has a bit of my tumor on it. For this trial, they need to stain the tumor cells with something to see if my tumor has something that would get me approved for the trial. Basically, around 85% of brain tumors have whatever "it" is, and they need to make sure mine has "it". So it appears that someone at Kaiser dropped the ball over the holidays and I don't think anyone was even looking for it until earlier this week. I'm told that they think they should have it by tomorrow & hopefully UCSF can get their hands on it and get it tested by mid next week.

I spoke with Dr. Prados at UCSF yesterday and he asked how I'm doing, if I've had any new symptoms since stopping my last chemotherapy over a month ago. He sounded encouraged that I haven't lost anymore movement, so decided that we should continue trying to get me into Trial A. If I had started declining, he would have had me start on Trial B, just to get me on some kind of treatment. Trial A is a phase 2 study meaning that dosing levels have been already been determined and they are now trying to determine how effective it is. Trial B is just a phase 1 trial, meaning that it is still not exactly known to be effective and they would be increasing dosage to find the maximum tolerable dose. I think phase 1 trials are a lot tougher on the body. If it turns out that Trial A dosen't help me, then I can still do Trial B.

Funny timing... I just got a call from a lady at UCSF to schedule an MRI for next Friday, the 14th :) Yay, finally stuff is happening!!!

On a less clinical note, my dad is still hard at work finishing the basement for my new little studio down there. He's hired the same contractor who built our house to finish the bathroom and put in a cast iron propane fireplace, but Dad is doing a lot of the work himself. He's been out in his mancave building shelves for the bathroom and the mini kitchen. He bought a really cool old buffet/hutch that he is going to put the bathroom sink in so it will become the vanity. He's ordered all of the fixtures and yesterday we went to pick out the fireplace. It's been like Christmas all over again because he's ordered almost everything online so we have UPS & Fedex dropping off stuff daily :) I can't wait for them to get started!

Hope you all are getting back into normal life too :) Cheers to having a routine again!

XOXO,
Laurie