The Friday the 13th Edition....

Well, after all the hustle and bustle of the past
week including crazy flights to Georgia and back for Kyle, funerals, meeting new and WONDERFUL people --

(What's up Georgia? you guys make some mighty nice folks!)--

and then a 5K fun run last night for a fellow Huntsman 
cancer inmate, er patient....the world has settled to still
for us.

Today (thanks to an amazing and wonderful boss)
I got to accompany Kyle to the Huntsman for
meetings with both an interventional radiologist (Yay
for Dr. O again, our farm bred Montana Y 90 kick-A
doctor) and our NEW friend Dr. T, a radiologist oncologist.

Yes two different things apparently.

I cannot GUSH enough about HOW FABULOUS these two 
doctors were.  The first Dr. (Dr. T) spent a fair amount
of time with us, reviewing scans, and blood and Kyle's
charts.  He told us that in his expert opinion he was
NOT the guy for us, but he still sat with us and talked
and talked until we had nothing left to say.

He said "Honestly Kyle, somethings working right, I've
seen enough cholangio patients and 9 months in a lot
of them are sadly are dead...and here you are 15 months in
still looking pretty darn good."

He then went on to say this, "If you're a 40 year old 
with terminal cancer?  Huntsman is going to thrown 
everything good they can at you to buy you time 
and keep you here with your family."

We like that kind of talk.

We LOVED Dr. T...a lot!

Then our next appointment was with Dr. O, the
farmboy who did Kyle's Y90 last November.  He finally
explained to us in CLEAR DETAIL that WITHOUT the Y90
Kyle's HUGE liver tumor would have grown out of 
control and most likely killed him off by now.

So now we finally get the good that came from Y90.

Kyle is still here.  That's the good--we bought time.

That tumor?  Still dead as a doornail.  It is a goner.

There is plenty of new stuff growing in Kyle's liver--
but that one is blasted to eternity and beyond.

We love blasted tumors.

Dr. O likes Kyle's liver function numbers (all in 
the normal range, shocking right?)  He's a little
worried about platelets and white blood counts (which
we knew the 5FU would knock way down) but says we
can bring those numbers up (even with a shot if we
have to).

Dr. O is going to meet with the tumor/liver board
on Tuesday to present Kyle's case to a bunch of OTHER
doctors to see if THEY have any thing else to throw
on the cancer, or any other ideas to help.

In the meantime, Dr. O wants to go back to Y90 again
to blast some of the big stuff on the other side of
Kyle's liver.  He feels it is still a GREAT option
to buy Kyle time....

...and not JUST time, but good time.

There are always risks, of course we know that.

There is the problem of insurance approving this again.

We know that. 

But we left the Huntsman Cancer Institute today feeling
HOPEFUL and not down hearted.  

We felt happy.  We feel like we have a team of people
REALLY REALLY REALLY fighting for us.

And not just for "quantity" of life, but "quality"
of life.

Kyle and I talked long and hard last night about
quantity vs. quality and we want to err on the side
of quality.

Kyle FEELS good.  We want as much of THAT kind of time
as possible.

So Friday the 13th didn't turn out nearly as bad 
as it could have.  

We have a new plan.  We love our new doctors.

We will move forward a day at a time and see
where it takes us and to what end.

In the meantime, I will finish all my homework 
that got mixed up in a very crazy week and hope
and beg for my teachers forgiveness.

Moving Forward, with a smile.

That's what we've got for today.