Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great and relaxing Christmas and New Year's. It was nice to have some time off to relax and get caught up on stuff at home (like playing Xbox). 2008 has been a difficult year for us and I am happy to move on to a new year.

It's been a while since I have updated and to be honest, there isn't much to update. I have my eleventh chemo treatment tomorrow and that's still going OK. I have felt sick more the last couple of weeks than I did during the first round, but the medication still works pretty good to control the nausea and pain (joint pain, which can get really bad) so I am not complaining. I am still tired pretty much all of the time.

I have two chemo treatments left (tomorrow and 1/9) and we learned a few days ago that we would be going back to Boston on 1/14 for testing and to meet with the doctors. I will be having a head MRI, a cardiac MRI and a full body PET/CT scan done. The head MRI is probably to take a closer look at my orbit. In October and December they did bone scans and both times there was a "hot spot" on my left orbit. The doctors said it could be sinus related but they would eventually want to look into it more. The cardiac MRI is to look at the tumor again and the full body PET/CT scan is to look for both changes in the current "spots" as well as anything new. We will be meeting with Dr. Shakar (the surgeon) and Dr. Butrynski (the oncologist) and will find out whether or not I will be having surgery this month.

I am really hoping for surgery ASAP. The pains and funny feelings I get in my chest make me think about the tumor and how badly I want it taken out. On top of that, I want to move on to the next step of this. Not knowing what's next drives me crazy, especially not knowing when. My gut tells me it's going to happen this month and we will know for sure in the next couple of weeks. I still have a very positive attitude about this and I know that I will get through it, it's just a matter of time and treatment.