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  

What a Roller Coaster Ride!

During spring break we went to Orlando to visit Universal Studios, SeaWorld, and Busch Gardens. We rode a lot of different roller coasters; each with their own twists and turns,  ups and downs.  They were all really fun.  If you haven't figured it out yet,  I am setting the story up for the ole roller coaster analogy. This coaster ride started with a scary plunge into darkness with a high probability of doom but it came back into the light with that feeling of free floating out of our seat. We thought that was the end of the ride, but just as we are starting to relax and unhook the seat belt, we go shooting through an unending helix.

In health terms, the pathology report came back on Friday. We were anticipating this but not worried at all as doc had said nothing looked very suspicious and it was being sent in as a precaution and pretty standard just to make sure. The phone call was supposed to confirm this so Crescence could continue on with her recovery from surgery.  Instead,  the phone call was like a gut punch. Apparently there were some cancer cells found that appear to be the fast growing type, and now Crescence needs to undergo some type of chemotherapy. We don't have a lot of details and won't until we meet with the oncologist in Seattle, hopefully in a few days. Meanwhile,  I am in Kennewick helping my family with funeral arrangements, getting dad moved into assisted living, and preparing the family home to be put on the market.

We are grateful for all the support from family,  friends, and especially our work family at White Salmon Valley School District.  With every one's support and the grace of God we just keep swimming.

Brian and Crescence Morris