hey cancer - you're losing!

Hi Friends...

Here's a bit of good news to start your day - James had a CT yesterday and from the best of Dr. Einhorn's ability to discern, James is responding to treatment. (Insert sound of party horn here.)

In an ideal world, our insurance would have listened to our doctor's clinical evidence which necessitates a PET scan...but we don't live there...so a CT it was. Unfortunately - or I guess fortunately, depending on how you see things - James's cancer in his chest is only at the cellular level, which means a CT cannot pick it up. So the only thing that Dr. Einhorn was able to say definitively is that James's cancer is not worse. (No new tumors, no new growth, no progression of disease.)

We take that as a win. 

Had we access to the PET, we might have even better news...like, "Oh, by the way, all those cells that were cancerous are no longer there." Or some such glory. But we are indeed very thankful that between the CT results and the fact that James's symptoms are decreasing, Dr. Einhorn can conclude that treatment has been effective.  

So we continue on. James had another infusion yesterday and will continue to receive them every 3 weeks.

In other really great news, this all means that we get to head back to China for a bit of time this summer. This is not a permanent move back, of course, but we will get to visit for at least one month.

James's ever-so-kind and well-connected doctor has gotten in touch with his old friend/former colleague Dr. Theera...the onocologist in Thailand who first diagnosed James...to find out the availability of the drug in Bangkok. (Insert gleeful humming of "It's a Small World" here.)

If - and it's a big IF, people - the drug is available and it's being used in the same way (i.e., to treat lung cancer), James could get treated once in Thailand before returning Stateside which would extend our stay for a couple weeks.

That would be remarkable.

Over the next couple weeks as the girls finish school and James continues to improve (right?), we'll be busy prepping to return...visa applications, booking flights, brushing up on our Chinese, and all that good stuff.

We so appreciate your prayers through all of this, and give thanks for your patient endurance along what has turned out to be a long stretch of road. Thank you for journeying with us.

So be truly glad. There is great joy ahead...

1 Peter 1.6 (NLT)