After her latest three-weeks-on, one-week-off chemotherapy treatment, my mother's CA-125 scores have come down by nearly 200 points, to around 600. This is excellent progress. Still, the last week was no picnic. Several days of worse-than-usual abdominal pain. The doctor is recommending more pain killers.
Now it's back to chemotherapy again this week.
'There's a touching story in the Belfast Telegraph entitled "All my wife wanted was to see her little girl grow up." The story is personal account of Sandra Coulter-Ellis and how she dealt with ovarian cancer and how it affected their family.
It's a familiar story, with chemotherapy treatments, remission, false hopes, and the trials and tribulations of CA-125 scores. Ovarian cancer is heart-breaking in that way; so many people are affected and they and the success rate has not improved in more than 20 years. It's one thing to read about the statistics and it's another thing when it affects your family. This article helps capture what it's really like without becoming trite or sensational.
Also, March is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month in the UK, so check out some of the links below.
This weekend, my younger brother Tim is visiting my parents. My sister and her daughter Brianna have been staying at my parents and will be there for another week. And next week my brother Michael is visiting for a few days. My parents appreciate having visitors during this time.
I'll have to figure out how to get back out to Florida for a visit, but I've got some travel coming up with work. Heck, they probably will appreciate a week by themselves.
Yale University has licensed their early stage cancer detection test to LabCorp. Preliminary results from the tests have been good and Yale expects to conduct additional clinicial studies before the commercial introduction by LabCorp.
Ovarian cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women and one of the most difficult cancers to detect. Early detection is critical to treatment.