To start the year, Joyce had another PET Scan. The results have shown us that her current treatment has done all it can do to keep her cancer at bay. We knew going into this treatment, since it was just recently approved in the spring of 2021, that it would help for a while, but not forever. The cancer she had in her lungs is not present. The cancer she had in her upper torso is not present. That was all good news. The cancer in her liver has progressed. That was the bad news. And with that news we are forced, temporarily, to drop anchor, so to speak, on her treatments. She will be scheduled for a biopsy of her liver in the next few days. After that we have to wait for couple of weeks for the results to come back, the new treatment to be decided upon and the insurance okays to be done.
The key phrase in the last paragraph, “the new treatment to be decided upon,” is the one on which to focus. According to her doctor, there may not be a treatment that is suitable for her situation. So, while there is always hope, we still live with the reality of the moment. And in that sense the current horizon line is the tree tops across the lake.
For all that is unknown at the moment, I do want to point out that it is encouraging that Joyce is getting ready to chase me around the house for telling bad jokes. She has been working at getting stronger. At the moment she has worked her way up to walking the length of a football field and going down and up the basement stairs 3 times in succession. It just points out once again how much of a fighter she is as she works her way through all of this.
