Today, we're supposed to be heading to the hospital for a CT scan to help gauge the effectiveness of the newest chemotherapy treatment.

We have an appointment with the doctor next Monday to review the results and see where we go from there.

Mom is hanging in there, although I don't think she is particularly thrilled with the idea of yet another test.

Today's chemotherapy treatment went well for Mom. Her blood counts were good, and even though she was a "long way 'round the bend" mentally, she kept on smiling.

There does seem to be a correlation between the dexamethasone (steroid) that they give Mom to combat the nausea and her cognitive ability. Depending on who you talk to, either me or my Dad, the correlation is small to gigantic, respectively.

Her mental faculties should improve as the effects of the steroid lessen and hopefully in a day or two, she'll be closer to what counts as normal nowadays.

We really appreciate the continued thoughts and help that we are getting from everyone. There really is no way to adequately thank all of you for everything that you have done. We are humbled every day by the way people that are close to Mom come through.

I'm mom-sitting this morning while Dad goes to a doctor's appointment.

Mom is doing okay, at least physically. She's tired and fatigued, but all this is to be expected as a result of the chemotherapy.

I arranged to have a nurse and home-health aid come by every so often to try and help out a little bit and give my Dad a break. The nurse can do blood work, which would help us alleviate one trip to the doctor's office.  The home-health aid is going to help with ADLs (activities of daily living) such as baths and the like. I hope it works out like it should.

Mom's cognitive ability is about the same. She continues to have issues with short-term memory and basic recollection, but I can still communicate with her pretty well. Probably easier than Dad at this point.

Monday, 22 March will be our next chemotherapy treatment. After that treatment, Dr. Aurora wants to take some additional scans to gauge progress.

Mom had her lab work and doctor's appointment today.

Her blood counts are good and the doctor said that the fatigue and weakness that she is experiencing is consistent with the new treatment that she is getting.

He wants to do one more treatment on March 22nd, then do another series of CT scans to see what effect, if any, the new drug is having.

If the new drug is performing well, then he will schedule another treatment. If it is not, we are going to have to discuss whether or not to continue chemotherapy.

We reviewed briefly the results of the comparison between Mom's initial brain MRI and the one taken a couple of weeks ago. He said that there were still numerous spots, but that overall, they were smaller than before. This indicates that the radiation was effective. However, chemotherapy has no effect on brain mets due to the brain/blood barrier.

This led me to ask his opinion about Mom's cognitive difficulty and whether he thought it was caused by the brain mets or by the chemotherapy treatment. His opinion was the brain mets. This means, if true, that we can expect little to no improvement in Mom's cognitive capability.

So, where do we stand? Mom is tired, weak, and not all there some of the time. But she continues to express the opinion that she wants to continue treatment for as long as it is practical to do so.

The next two weeks may see an improvement as the effects of the last chemo treatment fade.

I hope so.

Mom continues to tolerate the new chemotherapy medicine without too many adverse side effects. In fact, her condition with this new medicine is similar to her condition while taking the cisplatin/Alimta combination.

She is tired, of course, but that is to be expected. Her appetite remains good and she has not experienced any nausea to speak of since the treatment on Monday, March 1st.

From a cognitive standpoint, she is up and down. It is unclear, and probably will remain so, as to whether the chemotherapy is causing more cognitive difficulty than her brain mets, or not. I will try and ask the doctor about that when we see him tomorrow. For those of you that have visited, thank you. It seems to me that when Mom is able to visit with someone besides Dad and I, she perks right up and can actually seem to be a bit more "together" than usual. I know she enjoys it and I believe it makes a difference to her.

Speaking of tomorrow, we go have the normal lab work that is done one week post-chemotherapy treatment, but this time we will also see Dr. Aurora. He wanted to see her and assess how she has been tolerating the new medicine and I suspect after this visit we will have our appointment for the next treatment, which should be on March 22nd, if the schedule holds true.

I feel like we are approaching more rapidly the time when difficult decisions will have to be made. That said, we continue to make the best out of what we have, and Mom is still determined to continue to fight as much as she can.

Today was chemotherapy day for Mom and overall it went smoothly.

We met with Dr. Aurora (Mom's oncologist) this morning and he was happy with her condition and was quite insistent that we go ahead with the treatment today.

Mom's blood counts were all good, too.

The only real concern that we discussed was the effect of the steroid that Dr. Aurora prescribed for before, during, and after this new chemotherapy drug. The dosage causes Mom to be more confused and less lucid than normal. We ran into this last week, but did not recognize it as related to the steroid. To that end, Dr. Aurora recommended that we halve the dose from now on and see how that works. He doesn't want to suspend the steroid, because it does help to reduce the physical discomfort that could be brought on by the Taxotere.

After the doctor visit, Mom went back to the infusion room and got her treatment. This included the Taxotere and Zometa, a drug given to improve Mom's bone density. Dr. Aurora is concerned about that due to the progression of the cancer in the bone.

These drugs do not take as long as the prior combination of drugs that Mom was getting, so she was finished after about three hours or so.

She's resting comfortably at home and now the wait begins to see what side effects present themselves with this new drug.