A Cup of OJ: The Results

Hi! Hope all is well with you all!

I apologize for just getting this posted, I tried really hard but I think every time I sat down to write my phone rang or something came up :) Well the results finally came in this week and Friday morning we finally got to meet with Dr. K. We got checked in for Dad's 945 appointment and per usual all crammed in the small examining room. We waited about 45 minutes to see Dr. K and the whole time laughed while making jokes about why he was running behind (ex. pacing outside the room because he is so nervous to talk to our crazy family). Once Dr. K came in he deeply apologized and Dad was the first one to speak up and say that whats done is done and we are there to here the news not dwell on the past. I think Dr. K was a little relieved, but went right into saying that the results were not particularly good.

Dads tumor cells do no have the egfr mutations that they were looking for. Why does this matter? Once chemo stops doing its job (In Dads case since the adrenal tumor wasn't shrinking) they go to a second kind of treatment called Tarceva. Tarceva directly targets the egfr mutations and since dad doesn't have those mutations Dr. K said it gives us three options:

The first is to do an old school form of chemo. Dr. K said he doesn't recommend it at all because it will severely diminish his quality of life. Dad is doing so well so we said PEACE OUT to that idea before he even finished talking about it :)
The second is to do the Tarceva anyway. There is no way to know that it wont work, and about 10% of patients without the egfr mutation see results using the Tarceva.
The second is to go to a hospital called TGen (The link takes you to their 411 on their website). TGen specializes essentially in clinical trials. They are the best of the best at what they do and Dr. K said he has a good friend over there that he would recommend us to.

We decided to go ahead and get all of Dad's info sent over so we can get a preliminary meeting started as soon as possible. Once we meet with Dr. Weiss at TGen, hopefully early this week, then we will decide from there what exactly we are going to do.

Dr. K also wanted to get an X Ray of Dad's knees because they have been bothering him the last few weeks. The Xray would allow them to see if the irritation was cancer or something else. While he was doing that Jill came out and spoke with the rest of us and explained how sorry she was all that this happened (began tuning out here..). She assured us that she would be the one sending Dads info over to TGen and there would be no delays whatsoever...the rest isn't even worth writing about. The X Ray tech said he didn't see anything on the Xray which was awesome, hopefully Dad's knees feel better soon!

I will keep you all updated as we know more, but until then Dad is feeling great and looking forward to his new golf clubs that are coming this week :) Thank you as always for your continued prayers, we are so blessed to have the support team we do!