Chemo and Doctor Appointment This Week

Hi All,

I had a great doctor appointment this week. We went over several medical tests that I've recently had. My CT scan was unremarkable, which is a very good thing. It's like a "Gno gnews is good gnews" type of thing. Unremarkable means no new cancer showing up. My colonoscopy (about a month ago) came out great--no new cancer in that one either. My doctor submitted me for a test of something called a KRAS mutation. Apparently, if you have a KRAS mutation, some awesome cancer-fighting drugs won't work. One of those drugs is Erbitux. He submitted 3 people for this test. Out of the three I am the only one who came back negative for the KRAS mutation. I don't know who the other two people are. But the good news for me is that Erbitux should work nicely for me. That's great to hear, especially since I've been on it for nearly a year (with a few breaks here and there). For now, I'm still off of my Erbitux (the face rash causing medicine) and I'll probably be off of that one for one more month. This way my scalp will have a chance to heal. I'm down to one scab on my scalp (there were like a dozen before). Because of that, and because it will probably come back when I start the medicine again, I'm probably going to cut all of my hair off. I've never gone bald before. I hear that bald is beautiful.

I had a great day yesterday, celebrating my one year chemo-versary. I rode my bike to my local Metrolink station and took the train into LA. I nearly missed the train and could literally feel the over-exertion looming. Once I got onto the train, I rested and took a nausea pill. I also snuck in few bites of fruit. By the time I got to LA and met my cousin there, I was feeling much better. and we spent some time shopping at Olvera Street. Having a bike in that part of LA was great. We wandered around to Little Tokyo and my dad met us at a Shabu-Shabu restaurant for lunch. After that, Jef and I visited Starbucks and enjoyed LA some more. I took the train back home and had a nice, slow paced bike ride back home. It was great to spend some much time on a bicycle again. I literally didn't operate a car yesterday--very refreshing.

As for today, I need to pop into work for a bit (unofficially of course since I don't work on Fridays). Then we're off to Lake Arrowhead tonight. We'll spend the night with my parents and will go on an Easter Egg hunt with Erica and her adorable cousins. After that, we'll be going to see the tulips garden up there. Good stuff. I'll post pictures on FB afterwards.

Best wishes and big hugs to all,

Tim