My life since metastatic osteosarcoma diagnosis October 2002. I am Audra, a 34 yr old female. My husband is Glen and our 6+ year old daughter is Angela.
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Thursday, June 24, 2004
As many of you know, Audra's health has declined a bit over the past few weeks. The intermittent paralysis on the right side of her face caused by the growth of the brain tumor is no longer intermittent. Here ability to blink, swallow and speak has been compromised. She has moments when her speech is not compromised but that's infrequent. Perhaps the new chemotherapy treatment is contributing to the additional paralysis.
Audra was battling the disease, physically and mentally, until the recent paralysis. Now she seems to be questioning her fight and has significantly cutback her social activities.
On Tuesday Audra started a dual chemotherapy treatment, oxaliplatin and iriotecan (or something like that). The doctor claims that this combination showed positive results in an osteosarcoma patient who was a bit worse than Audra. If this treatment is 100% successful, Audra's tumors will not go away. This is somewhat different than most soft tissue tumors with which most of us are familiar. Best case is Audra's tumors stop growing if the chemotherapy is effective but they will not disappear without surgery. Audra has about 15 tumors throughout her body (brain, neck, back, ribs, chest, hip, sacrum, scalp, etc.). No surgeon is going to put Audra under the knife unless tumor growth/spread has been stabilized. That's the best we can hope for.
One of the side effects on the new chemotherapy is super sensitivity to the cold. Audra has to avoid the refrigerator, freezer, extra cold air conditioning and cold beverages. She seems to be handling these side effects just fine. The doctor said the side effects should last for about 5 days, after which she'll be fine. She is getting the treatments weekly for 4 weeks, so I guess she'll have two days per week when the cold isn't bothering her. We'll see.
Audra has spent the last three evenings at her parents' house while Angela and I are home. Because Angela is recuperating form some type of flu, we thought it best to keep Audra and Angela separated for a few days.
Thank you all for your wishes and prayers. I'm sure Audra will be in touch as soon as she's got the energy.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Hello everyone!
I went to see Dr. Rosen on Monday, May 24th. I had my treatment of Zomtea. This time the treatment made me feel like crap for 3 days. That has not happened in a while but I’m feeling ok now. Being that I’m posting this so late, I’m actually getting ready to go back for another treatment.
Since my last blog update my face went back to having the same problem and then got a little better. We do not know why this is happening. Like I said before we will not really know anything until we get a scan. That scan will be scheduled in the next few days before I go back for my next Zometa treatment. I also just started having problems with my tongue. A few times a day the muscles or something tighten up so I can’t talk correctly. This, as well as the face drooping all have to do with the tumor in the brain.
I asked the doctor if I need to be concerned that this might cause me to not breathe. He said no so that was a relief.
I hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday. I will write again soon. Keep me in your prayers.
Audra
Thursday, June 10, 2004
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