Clinical Trial

It's been a couple months since my last post, mostly due to there not being much news to share.  John's recovery from the November - December radiation treatments seems to be more or less complete.  His taste buds and saliva production have substantially improved and he has little to no eating and/or swallowing issues. 

He had his post-treatment scans (both PET and CT) in late March and we have received partial results.  They seem to indicate all areas are stable, which, in essence, means no growth.  As long as we can received "no growth" reports, I'll consider it a victory.

So now we move on to more chemo, as John will be participating in the clinical trial for a new drug called Belinostat.  Following is a description of the drug found in my internet research:

    "In pre-clinical trials belinostat has shown to be effective against multiple cancers by inhibiting cell proliferation (inhibiting cancer growth) and inducing programmed cell death (“apoptosis”) in tumour cells (the tumour cells are forced to self-destruct)."                                                                      

Our prayer is this drug will, indeeed, do what it has shown promise of doing.  We'll head to Cleveland tomorrow, where they will do a "trial run" on John, which will involve administering a lower dose of the drug and monitoring him for 24 hours to assure he will be able to tolerate with no difficulties.  Assuming all goes well, he will begin the "full strength" treatments next Monday (4/16).  The schedule is 5 days of treatment, followed by 2 weeks off before the next treatment.  During the week-long treatments we will, again, be residents of the Hope Lodge.

So, that is where we stand.  We continue to appreciate all your thoughts and prayers and are looking forward to good results from this new phase.  I will continue to update as we make our way through this treatment.