Post Consult Update

Post Consult Update

Here is the end-of-week post consult update. It’s been a busy one with many hospital visits and consults and highly technical discussion. My brain is a bit fried from all of it, but below is a good summary hopefully.

So the basics – no real great or ground-breaking news at this point. However, we’re getting information and building a plan, slowly. The reality is, they are going to have to treat Cindy again for this cancer, in one form or another. However, there are about 100 unanswered questions at present, and we need to work through getting as many answers as we can before directional decisions are made. That said, there appears to be no critical rush at this point in getting to the treatment as there was the first time. They got like 99% of the shit, but this niggling 1% is going to be a pain in the ass. The velocity is also be a by-product of the need for more detailed information too and I’ll talk about that below.

Meetings Galore

Yesterday we met with the entire Radiology team and others yesterday in Hamilton. Seriously, like 10 people, all at once in a small office. I can’t even remember what the hell most of them did, but they’re all big brains and experts. This team, along with the oncologist and ophthalmologist, and Dr’s around the world, are working to get a plan together. As noted before, it could be injections to the eye, if they feel it’s localized enough. It could be a combination of eye injections and some radiation to the eye cavity if they feel that’s a better chance of total success. It could be just radiation to the eyes depending on a few findings. And finally it could be radiation to the eyes and the brain depending on what MRI’s show. They will not do the matrix program again unless there is some really out-there finding.

The next steps are – first, Cindy is going to go out west to BC to see her daughter Katie for 12 days. This was a pre-scheduled trip, and is a good time to do it. It’s a much needed refresher and break for her (from the process and probably me). Dr Kouroukis saw this as a great opportunity and made the room to do it. Once she’s back, they will immediately start MRI’s, CT scans, x-rays, spinal tap, and much more testing to determine where, if anywhere, they think the cancer is still remaining and active. From there, we/they decided on the next treatment steps.

Positivity

The positive news is, everyone is confident they can treat this. They are literally pulling in experts from around the world to help with the plan. And the doctors and nurses you can tell are doubling down on making this fucking disease go away. The more tough aspect is that this form of disease is so rare to begin with they really have limited, if any, prior art on how to treat this aspect. As they noted for comparison only, with breast cancer they have hundreds of thousands of global cases and studies to pull from. In this case, we’re literally dealing in low double digits in terms of number of scientific cases, and possibly low single digits or no cases of this actual outcome.

The reality is, we may be forced to make some semi-blind decisions based on best thoughts (no pun intended, but that is kinda funny I guess). But they will be highly informed decisions and what is best for Cindy.

Now, this ain’t nothing we haven’t done and won before…..but it’s always stressful of course. We’re keeping a very positive attitude and working to really deeply understand the pros/cons of each approach. Cindy is in great health, quite literally in her own words “as good as I’ve felt in years”. That is a huge physical and mental benefit. It will take some time getting through the ramp up process, and we may not have many updates for a little bit. However, please feel free anytime to reach out – we’re entirely open and transparent and happy to discuss (or have a beer [or 10!]). We have all the boat and business and lifestyle stuff we’re trying to not focus on in a negative way. That of course is vitally important personally and financially and there are decisions to me made around that as information develops. Oh well…time will sort this out for us.

That’s it for the post consult update. Thanks as always for listening and supporting. And make sure you all live each day to its fullest!!!