I know it’s been a while since I last wrote, and some of you have asked what has been going on with Laura. The previous posts were all mainly written after everything had happened. The last one, though, was as things were happening, and this one is now, too.
Things are happening much more slowly now that all of the initial chaos has passed. It has been good and bad. Good in the sense that we are not scrambling to find things out or rush to get treated. Bad in the sense that things seem to go slowly even when we want rapid results.
Last time, we talked about the treatment and it being done. After the treatment was complete, she was scheduled for an MRI as a basis measurement. They wanted to know how much change had happened since the start of treatment and to set a “marker” for what might happen after.
Laura got scanned back in March, and what we saw was good news: the brain was healing and very little of the cancer was left in the brain area.
In the image above, the December MRI (pre-treatment) is on the right side, while the March MRI is on the left side. These two images show that no new cancer is growing, and also that the brain is in process of healing itself: filling in the gap where the tumor was removed.
They said that the cavity will always be there – that she’ll always have it to some degree. But even so, there is such a clear difference in the image on the right and the one on the left.
After the treatment, which was the toxic chemo medication and radiation, Laura was extremely tired all the time and has had some hair loss in the target area. They warned us about this, but fortunately, she has a lot more hair than I do and can just let it fall over the affected area. There has also been a bit of welcome weight loss, although I don’t recommend this process for that.
A little while before the MRI, we got to visit Houston. While we were there, Laura made an appointment with her favorite doctor in the Houston area (who we don’t get to see much), Dr Bob Rakowski. He has been very helpful in setting her up with a supplement protocol to aggressively kick-start her natural immune system so that it can attack the remaining cancer cells. She did a short two-week cleanse, and with the success of that, she’s now on a 30-day protocol to bolster the effects.
With all of these things coming to an end in March (the treatments I mean), the oncologist gave us a two-month reprieve to rest and recover. Of course, they love their MRIs, so she was scheduled for a check-in after two months: which was this week.
Today, we had the follow-up visit with the oncologist to look at the images.
“The scans look great!” to our HUGE relief.
March scan images on right, May scans on left.
What you can see here are the side-by-side comparisons of the same kind of scan in the same “slice” (cross-section area of the brain). The scans show NO GROWTH of cancer, and even a small reduction in the amount highlighted by the contrast.
Not only was our doctor very happy with the results, but SO WERE WE!!!
With the good news, he even told us he was not going to push more chemo drugs. This was GREAT news because those drugs are not only toxic but make her very tired.
This will give us a chance to strengthen her body with better diet, some exercise, and good rest.
I should have more to say I suppose – some more witty and pithy sayings, but I am so emotionally drained that I just want to get this out there for you to read and to thank God, much as I am.
Thank you for your prayers and we will continue to keep you updated, if not quite as frequently as we did at first.
::: jeffphillips.org ::: 