All Done!

The last of the Red Devil to ever enter her body!

Well, the last week has definitely not been boring. Crescence got to ride in an ambulance to Providence Hood River, and then she got to spend the night in one of their excellent guest suites only to get poked and prodded trying to figure out why she was having chest pain. That put her final chemo treatment off for a week. This morning, before doing her final chemo treatment, she had to do a cardio stress test to make sure her heart is healthy enough for the treatment. She passed that with flying colors, so her heart is healthy. I think it was just a heart fart that caused the chest pain, but what would I know. A tradition among chemo patients is to ring a bell when leaving their last treatment - she rang them all! While this treatment is complete, Cescence is exhausted and now has several years of CT scans to endure. We will continue to pray for NERDs (No Evidence of Residual Disease). Her first post-treatment scan will be in three weeks and then once every three months for the first year. During the second year, scans are once every four months, then once every six months during year three. When she is cancer-free for five years, she is technically "cured".  After that point, scans will be done once a year for the next 50 years or so.

We can't thank everyone enough for all the prayers and support through all this. We got so much strength from you all!



I am not a doctor, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I have learned a lot about Uterine Leiomyosarcoma (uLMS) through all of this. So I want to give a little advice to the ladies out there. If you are diagnosed with a uterine fibroid and have any of the symptoms listed below, please tell your gynecologist to treat your fibroid as a possible uterine leiomyosarcoma tumor. This means your fibroid should be removed in one piece, not cut up or morcellated as Crescence's was. Your doctor might believe the risk of uLMS is very low, but the latest research has found the odds of uLMS for women who have a fibroid with the below symptoms is 1 in 350. The survival rate is over 80% when initial treatment is carried out correctly.  Had we known this, we would never have agreed to save a few days in the hospital by doing the Laparoscopic Hysterectomy.

Symptoms of uLMS vary from woman to woman and can include:
• Heavy periods
• A rapidly growing fibroid
• Abnormal vaginal bleeding
• Abnormal or mucousy vaginal discharge
• Pelvic pain or pressure
• Pain or discomfort during sexual intercourse.
• Abdominal pain or pressure
• Abdominal bloating and distention
• Change in bladder or bowel habits
• Blockage of urinary flow
**Crescence had all but one of these symptoms.

Better Late Than Never

People have been asking how Crescence is doing, and I have been derelict in my blogging duties. I apologize. My lovely wife is now halfway through the six chemo treatments and is back to work. A lot has happened since my last post; some great and some not so great. 

Starting with the great - we were given an opportunity to rent a studio apartment for 13 days on Maui for less than a weekend in Seattle. Thank you, Sue and Neil. So, with the blessing of her nurses and doctors, we jetted off to Maui. It was an amazing trip for just the two of us. The water was warm, the beaches were spectacular, the sunsets were beautiful and the weather was perfect. Overall, it was the most relaxing vacation we have ever taken. To top it all off, we avoided setting foot in a hospital the entire month of July! 

Now for the not so great - August did not have a good start as Crescence ended up having minor surgery on the first, which has delayed her chemo treatments. As you may know, chemo weakens a person's ability to fight infection, and if you get an infection the chemo has to stop until it clears up. Turns out, she had an abscess that turned into a fistula. The surgery was a temporary fix to clear the infection, but she will need another surgery down the road to permanently repair the fistula. We received news today that there is no sign of infection, so she is cleared to resume chemo this Thursday. If all goes well, she will be able to finish her last chemo treatment in the first week of October. Then in early 2020, she can get the other surgery done. 
Thanks again for everyone's support.

Crescence and Brian

Round Two of Six

So I have been derelict in my blogging duties but we just kept swimming along. Today, as I write this, we are in the treatment room at Compass Oncology in Vancouver. Round one was completed three weeks ago. As I have said before, everyone responds differently but Crescence did have the typical side effects of nausea, fatigue, muscle and joint pain, mouth sores, and the dreaded hair falling out. She felt much better this last week just in time to start the next cycle. The doc says some of the side effects are cumulative so we can expect some things to get more difficult with each added treatment. Crescence had a minor surgical procedure on Monday to get her port put in. This will make the chemo procedure go much easier and safer and, for once, there were no complications.

As a side note, Jasper, our 10-year-old nephew is staying with us for a month. Crescence just loves being a mother so he has been a delight to have around.

People have been so kind to us bringing food, mowing the lawn, bringing flowers, visiting, and offering encouragement. There have been so many cancer survivors who have offered support, advice, and encouragement and we are very grateful for all the support.

In this picture, Crescence is sporting a peach-colored prayer shawl made by Rose Goeres, a peach bracelet made by Dee Anderson, a keep swimming bracelet provided by my sister, Catrina, and a "Just Keep Swimming T-shirt provided by Amazon (t-shirt not free but free two-day shipping w/prime). Interesting side note about the "Just Keep Swimming" theme - we see it everywhere we go now and it pops up in the most random places. Or is it random? It might seem cheezy but having a theme or motto is very comforting and fun at the same time.

We will be going to go camping at the Oregon coast for 10 days starting July 5th which we are both looking forward too. Oh, I almost forgot the results of her first CT scan post surgery. The report says "No Evidence of Residual Disease) or NERD for short. We hope for more NERDs along the way. Pray for NERDs! NERDs are good! GO NERDs! Next scan in three months.

Thank you all and remember when you have one of those days that sucks, JUST KEEP SWIMMING!

Love ya all,

Brian and Crescence

Finding Chemo! Hopefully not coming to a theater near you.

I am sorry but I couldn't resist the Finding Nemo rhyme but today's short post is all about our first chemo meeting with Dr. Rushing. He is overseeing Crescence's chemo treatment at Compass Oncology in Vancouver. He was also the doc who treated, my dear friend and colleague, Kim Meche. While Kim lost her battle with ovarian cancer, her positive attitude and relentless courage was, and still is, inspiring to Crescence and I. Kim's catch phrase was "Carry On" and that is just what she did until the end. Certainly we will have ups and downs along the way but we will carry on by leaving a positive impact on our world. My wife is confident, strong, and stubborn just like Kim so it couldn't be any other way.

Dr. Rushing looked at all the options with us from doing nothing to a cocktail of chemo treatments. In the end we all decided that sticking to the plan as drawn up by the UW team is our best option. Crescence will begin treatment on May 30th and continue every three weeks for six treatments. She will lose her hair along with numerous other side effects. Unfortunately, everyone reacts differently to chemo, so we will have no idea how it will impact her until she goes through it.  After the first treatment she will have a chemo port surgically placed to make the treatments easier to to administer.

Now here is where you come in. Everyone is asking what they can do to help, and I have said when we need help we will ask. Libby Childers (Cox) has been voluntold to organize a meal train while Crescence is in treatment. I am not putting her contact information on the Internet for every Nigerian scammer to latch on to, so if you don't know how to contact her text or email me and I will get you her information. Crescence and Chase are easy to cook for. She just can't have bell peppers. I, on the other hand, am the worlds pickiest eater so don't worry about me. I will just throw a couple corn dogs in the air fryer.

I leave you with a short video; demonstrating what we will be doing all summer and into the fall.

Could've! Would've! Should've!

We don't want these three words to haunt us but they just might.  We just got back from a soggy Seattle and a visit with our fabulous Dr. Heidi Gray. As she suspected, the pathology from Crescence's 2015 hysterectomy was positive for ULMS. While we can't blame the gynecologist for missing this, we are bothered that the pathologist didn't make the right call back in 2015 so we could've, would've, and should've done something different. However, he didn't and there is nothing we can do to change the past - we just keep swimming. And if you haven't seen, or maybe forgotten, here is the scene from Finding Nemo that explains the "Just Keep Swimming" reference.

So here is the plan of attack. Crescence will begin 18 weeks of doxorubicin hydrochloride chemotherapy. They hope to start in the next week or two which will happen in six cycles that are three weeks apart. The side effects for this chemo are a mile long so if you really need to know there is this really cool tool on the Internet called Google. There is also a much lesser cool tool called Bing. Either way you get the point. However, there is one side effect that everyone wants to know about - Yes she will lose all her hair. Seriously, all of it so please don't anyone say to her, "Oh honey, you never know, you might be the lucky one." If you tell my wife this lie I will... I will.... I can't say what I will do because this is a family friendly blog.

This is just the short term plan . The long term plan is a complete cure. For this kind of cancer doctors don't like to give a prognosis as it is too unpredictable. Statistic are just numbers while Crescence is a person - a beautiful and strong person. We won't get caught up in survivor statistics because, right now, she is the only ONE that matters and we are going for 100% survivor rate for her. To ensure the ULMS is gone and doesn't come back she will undergo CAT scans of her torso midway through chemo, at the end of chemo, and then once every three months for two years. After that they go down to once every four months, once every six months until she has five years being cancer free. At that point she is technically cured. However, with sarcomas there's always a chance of them coming back, so she will get scans every year for the rest of her long and happy life just to be sure.

Again, we thank everyone for their support and prayers. The lawn is getting mowed, Craig is doing double duty at school, Rhonda is overseeing state testing and countless people have our backs in many other ways. My mother and brother were laid to rest this last weekend and dad is now in a retirement home so that phase is almost behind us. I leave you all with this picture of a special pair of bracelets my sister, Catrina, gave to Crescence and I this weekend.

Just Keep Swimmin!

Crescence and Brian

Subscribe to the blog and other enhancements

This is just a picture the real button is over there---->

I really thought this blog would be something that only lasted a couple weeks so I didn't really get under the hood to see what it can do. Apparently it can do a lot more than I knew. For example, you can now subscribe to get updates (look to the right side of the screen). Don't worry I won't spam you or sell your contact information, or willll I??? All the tools I am using are Google services so if you don't trust Google then, well, tough it is what it is.Can you tell I used to be a techie?

Another enhancement is the ability for anyone to leave comments. Previously it would only let users with a Google account to leave comments. If you do not have a Google account it will let you leave an anonymous comment so please remember to put your name in the body of the comment or we won't know who you are.

I also changed to title of the blog to "CCB - Crescence's Cancer Battle" to reflect the reality that we are in a battle for her life and will not give up until it is won!

We are going to the Dry-Shitties, I mean Tri-Cities today to help move my father into an assisted living facility and for my mother's and brother's funeral on Saturday. Then on Monday we go back to Seattle for a Tuesday appointment with the care team to discuss the treatment.

Thanks again to everyone for the prayers, food, and fellowship. Next blog update should be expected on Tuesday night. Don't forget to subscribe!!!

Just keep swimin, just keep swimmin!

Brian and Crescence

Uterine Leiomyosarcomas ( LIE O MYO) ULMS

ULMS Awareness Peach

Layomyo, Leomyo, no matter how you say it, it sucks. I am not sure if I mentioned, previously, that our doctor in Seattle is Dr. Gray; the real Dr. Gray from Seattle. Anywhoo, she called us yesterday so I could hear the diagnosis and ask questions. As I said in the roller coaster post the other day, the news was pretty unexpected but we do vaguely remember her mentioning the possibility of a Leimyosarcoma. She didn't think it was likely as uterine leiomyosarcoma (ULMS for short) is an extremely rare form of cancer, estimated to occur in 6 out of every 1,000,000 women in the United States each year. However, the odds of winning the lottery are much worse.

If you want to learn more about the specifics you can visit this website What is ULMS? If you go to this page it defaults to Bone and Soft Tissue. The information for ULMS is the link above that as shown in this picture. If you are not technical enough to understand what I am telling you then get one of your kids, grand kids, niece, nephew or other young person who understands the INTERNET to help.

Don't worry, there will not be a test next week on everything you have learned about ULMS. I'll give you at least a month before the first test.

So what is next for us you ask? Well, we get to travel to sunny Seattle on Tuesday May 14 to visit with our cheery Dr. Gray and her team to discuss the chemo therapy treatment. The goal of the treatment is to destroy any cancer cells that have escaped the tumor site. This type of cancer can spread easily and rapidly and therefore needs and aggressive treatment. 

One question we get from people is what stage is the cancer. As with everything else with Crescence this is not a cut and dry answer. Dr. Gray believes this is actually her second round with this cancer as she most likely had ULMS when she underwent a hysterectomy five years ago. I know you are wondering how could they have missed this when she had a grapefruit sized tumor at that time. I will explain that in a moment - be patient. Since this is a recurrent cancer they no longer use staging to describe it. But since everyone expects to hear the stage, the doc says it would be considered a stage II or borderline III. Staging is like golf in that you want a low score. Unfortunately I can't relate to a low golf score because I have a horrible slice. 

So how did they miss this? They miss it because it presents itself like most common fibroid tumors that women get. They look the same under imaging and don't look all that different during surgery. They can only tell during pathology. In Crescence's case they probably only sent samples to the pathologist and it is very possible that 90% of the fibroid was benign. It is also possible that the whole thing was benign. Either way we are moving forward with the aggressive treatment in order to have the best chance for a cure.

In closing I want to say to all the husbands out there  - tell your wife how much you love her. Hold her tight in your arms and appreciate every second she is standing by your side. When she asks you to go on a walk with her, get off you butt and take her on a walk. Stop taking her for granted because you never know what tomorrow will bring. 

Just Keep Swimming!

Crescence and Brian