A hundred times

A hundred times since yesterday I have sat here at this same computer and thought about what I should write. Just to write it all down almost seems to make it more real to me than if I didn't. But here goes.

Richard, I and my Mother-In-Law all went to the Oncologist appointment yesterday. We waited for what seemed like forever for the doctor. When he came in he was straight and to the point. Richard has Stage 4 active mestative recurrent colon cancer. Which just means it is outside of where it originally started and it is in the lymph nodes and growing. At first Richard was debating on doing any treatments. But the more the doctor talked the more he had second thoughts. So here is the plan.

Since Richard had such a difficult time the last time he did Chemo we are doing different medicines this time. And praying that it doesn't compromise his health with his Cystic Fibrosis. Richard said he would rather try and fail than to not and then question later wether or not it would have worked. So starting on Monday April 21 Richard will begin Chemo. He will do a week on and a week off for a total of 6 weeks. It is an oral medicine that he will take twice a day and then once a week every other week he will have to come to clinic and get an infusion IV medicine that is a booster to help the main chemo drug work more efficiently. The side effects of these drugs are the same if not worse than the ones he did before.

If Richard can tolerate the treatments and complete them the doctor said that he would have 2 years plus. If he can't tolerate the medicine and quits he is looking at about 11 months to a year. It could be more could be less. We are not the time keepers only God knows how much time any of us have. We have decided to make lots of memories. So the boys can look back on these times and say "Remember when." We are planning a trip to California in the coming months so Richard can see all of his family that lives there. He wants to take the boys to see Mickey Mouse and to just do a lot of camping and fun stuff. So we are going to do as much as we can and enjoy every minute of it.

If Richard finishes the chemo then June 9th will be the tell all day. Richard will go for another CAT scan to see if the Chemo worked and is shrinking the cancer or if it is continuing to grow.

Please continue to pray for our family for peace and understanding. God is in control and we leave it in his hands.