Roman Holiday

Kev has really perked up this past week. It's been 3 weeks since he's had any chemo and most of the side effects are gone. His energy is back and even his facial hair is starting to grow. His meds are down to only the anti-convulsants and narcotics (pain killers). His next appointment is not until June 5 and since the kids get out of school Wednesday (5/23) we are going to escape reality and go to southern Italy for a couple weeks. This will be a very special trip for the four of us. Hopefully everything goes well.

Detour

Cycle 4 did not start on Wed and we are going to take a short respite of sorts. There are multiple reasons for this - Kev was wanting a break from the side effects that were worsening and his oncologist did not want him undergoing chemo if he was to have surgery. So he is chemo free until early June. There is however, a new twist. Since he was to have the tumor resection done, his oncologist mentioned a trial that NIH has been doing that Kev could qualify for. It's called Lymphodepletion Plus Adoptive Cell Transfer. It has two phases and basically goes like this: Phase I - the tumor that is removed will be used to grow T-cells (tumor fighting immune cells) in a lab. If the growth of the T-cells is successful, Kev gets to continue. Phase II begins with extracting stem cells from Kev's blood, then treating with chemothearpy to destroy his immune system. Then the specifically tailored T-cells will be infused back into his system. There is a lot more details , but for now we are waiting the 4-6 weeks to see if they can get his T-cells to grow.

Kev did have his surgery today (Friday). It went quite well. We arrived at pre-op at 5:30 am and left with one less tumor and 12 new stitches at 2:00 pm.