Merry Christmas

May the Love and Peace of Jesus Christ be with each of you this Christmas Season. Thank you all for your love, encouragement, support, and prayers during the past year. It has truly been an incredible year, even if not in the way we had anticipated 12 months ago. Please continue your prayers for us, as this journey is not over, but certainly headed in the right direction.

Praying that this is a truly Merry Christmas for everyone.

Joe & Vicki

Chemo 16

I guess it's getting to be too hum-drum. I forgot to post about my chemo treatment last Friday, December 18. I did this one on Friday because doing it on my regular Thursday would have meant getting chemo right before my boss's Christmas party. That didn't seem like a good plan, so I had to do the chemo Friday morning for CRMC schedule reasons. Then I just took the rest of the day off. Good thing I did. I hope it was because I was a little run down from travel, and being out both nights before chemo, but this one was tough. Usually I feel fine the next day, but not this time. I felt pretty bad all day on Saturday. I was still able to do Christmas shopping, and some other stuff, but never felt good. Even today (Sunday) I haven't felt really good. I get to take another chemo on December 31. That ought to really start the New Year off with a bang!

Houston and back

We got home from Houston about 11:30 Tuesday (12/15/09) night. I got a good report again, praise God. The tumors continue to shrink and Dr. Abbruzzese is still impressed by my progress. He said I am doing so much better than most that he doesn't know exactly what the next step should be. He has to rely on oncology principles to determine my treatment rather than basing his decisions on what usually works. I will continue the same Chemo treatment until the week of February 22. Then I will get another CT scan and should be scheduled to meet with a radiation oncologist. After that I will probably spend about 6 weeks getting radiation treatments focused on the tumor area of the pancreas. It doesn't sound like a terrible thing to experience, just time consuming since it would be a daily treatment. I think being away from home that long will require some prior planning.

Snow

This week we traveled to Waterloo, Iowa for a business trip. I was travelling alone, so Vicki was able to come along. I didn't think the weather forecast was all that bad until we got here. Then we saw how much snow and cold was predicted, and the predictions came true. It snowed all day Tuesday, and was really snowing hard by late afternoon. Driving back to the hotel in the dark & heavy snow was an experience. I made it OK, but sure wished I had 4 wheel drive. It snowed all night and most of Wednesday. I ended up not even trying to get to the factory. Instead I tried working via the internet from our hotel room. Man, was that slow! I kept forgetting what I was trying to do.
The temp started dropping last night and continued down all day today (Wednesday). Right now, Wed evening, it's only 4 degrees, headed for a -7. It's not going to warm up much before we leave on Friday, but at least the snow is over after about 12-14 inches.
Tomorrow morning I will have to shovel the car out and go to work. Friday we head home, then Sunday we head south for Houston. That's going to be quite a change going from being snowed in, in Iowa, to the balmy temperatures of Houston.
I'm getting another checkup in Houston. Pray that the reports continue to be good. We will be home late on Tuesday the 15th.

Thanksgiving weekend

Sorry it's been so long since the last post, but somehow time just seems to get away. After the last chemo treatment I was able to start preparing the trailer for the weekend, but we didn't leave home until Thanksgiving morning. We got to Burlington, set the trailer up, then went out to eat with my family who were in town for the holiday. We enjoyed our weekend since we were able to spend some quality time with each other and with our families. The weather was beautiful on Friday and we spent time with Vicki's family decorating her parents house for Christmas. After we got home Sunday, I was able to get the trailer ready for cold weather.