July Follow Up Results

July Follow Up Results

It’s been quite a while since we’ve updated everyone and we wanted to share the July follow up results. The reason for the decent gap was, well, because there really wasn’t much going on medically as recovery and readjustment to life took over. That, unfortunately, has now changed. The abridged version is, there’s still more work to be done as they’ve found live cancer in the eye. This is pretty disheartening news, but, the doctors involved are again confident they can manage this new development accordingly.

Follow Ups

We had follow ups scheduled with both the ophthalmologist and the oncologist at regular intervals over the last couple of months. Oncology wise, they are happy with Cindy’s recovery and body levels. Everything there seems to indicate a healthy recovery. She’s feeling, in her words “as good as she’s ever felt”, which is another +1. Ophthalmology wise Dr. Hooper was watching the recovery visually and was initially happy with the results. This changed a little about 8 weeks ago with some cloudiness and floaters in the non-biopsied eye. He recommended a follow up at the optometrist a few weeks after that to see how vision was progressing (or not). As a result of this latest optometrist follow up, he grew concerned about the level of vision reduction and cloudiness in the one eye and proactively rescheduled an August appointment.

July 8th & 9th

The rescheduled appointment on July 8th involved some basic testing to confirm what the optometrist saw. This was easily confirmed and the deteriorating vision was quite obvious. The biggest concern was the source of the cloudiness as this was largely inexplicable without further investigation. We discussed at length, and the next step was a biopsy on the eye to take a sample and flush the vitreous (the jelly inside the eye). This is a very simple, short surgery that is over in a matter of minutes and is effectively painless. It only takes a day or so to recover sight, and maybe a week or so to recover full vision.

Fortunately, Dr. Hooper was concerned enough that he and his amazing staff held a surgery appointment for the next day and we were back in London on the 9th. The surgery was a snap and we were sent home to await the findings. We expected a fairly quick turnaround as the extracted fluid was at the lab by the time we left the hospital!

July 10th

Being the expert he is, Dr. Hooper had prepared us for basically one of two outcomes. One, that 90% of the floaters were dead or sterile cancer cells and the body was doing its thing cleaning up. That was the good outcome. The other was, that 90% of the floaters were live cancer and we were back to the drawing board. This is the come-on-this-can’t-be-right outcome. As with all pathology, it can take some time but often, the sooner they call the worse the report. This stereotype held true for us, again.

Just before 7pm, 30h after surgery, Dr. Hooper called to let us know the second scenario was in fact the case. They’d actually found 97% of the cells to be live and active cancer. Always overachieving it seems. This was quite devastating news and it took us both back to Oct 18th when we received the original call. To have a doctor call at almost 7pm with this information just showed us his dedication and appreciation for what was transpiring. There was more pathology to do, but this was critical news.

July 15th

We met again with Dr. Hooper on the 15th as a scheduled follow up to the surgery. Again, to emphasize how amazing this team is, he was actually scheduled to be on vacation this week and made the trip in specially. He ensured everything was looking good in terms of eye recovery post-surgery and that’s another piece of positive news. He had connected with the oncologist Dr. Kouroukis and discussed the pathology results – we are sure much to his dismay as he was so happy with the progress. The silver-lining in this finding appears to be that the cancer is identical to the one they found last October.

While this may seem like something odd to celebrate, what it indicates is that it is the exact same cancer. That is to say, it hasn’t changed or isn’t a new/different one. How or why it still exists is a question but the belief so far is this is “leftover” rather than “net new”, meaning we need to do some maintenance work.

Plan Forward

So what’s the plan forward? Well, first of all is to stay positive. This is a bit of a kick in the teeth given how excellent everything was progressing. But, as we’ve discussed on our end, it’s a pothole not a brick wall, and we have options. Moreover, Cindy is feeling great meaning any options can likely be executed aggressively. The oncology team are now building a plan forward to treat this new finding. As we understand today, it sounds like treatment may be one of three options. Two of those options being localized treatment in the eye (eye radiation or methotrexate injections). The other option being more rounds of chemotherapy as was done before. These all come with pros/cons and we need more testing to confirm a few things.

That’s the rough update from our side after a tough July follow up. We will continue to remain encouraged and thankful to the various teams involved in this, yourselves as cheerleaders and support. We will be back to more frequent updates as this maintenance cycle progresses and we have definitive plans.

As always, the teams are still taking donations for Juravinski Hospital at Cindy’s BadA$$ Fundraiser and we will be pushing this even more over the coming months in light of this new development. Any support would be greatly helpful.