Kicking Cancer Bash Website Link + Dr Appointment Update

The website for the Kicking Cancer Bash is LIVE! Big thanks again to Andy and Eric for creating the website and again to the large group of family and friends who are making this event possible! Love you guys!


http://www.earlstrieker.com/


Also, here is a little update from Dad's appointment on Friday. The Dr. said his levels are back to normal and he's looking really good. We finally have whole body scans on the calendar for the end of March (yeah!) - this will be a scary day, but I really really want to make sure there are still no signs of melanoma anywhere else in his body. We had always heard that you shouldn't go longer than three months without scans, (so you can understand our anxiety since his last set of whole body scans were in October before his first craniotomy) but the Dr. said this is only scan every 3-4 months when there is evidence of the disease in the body so you can test is treatment is working or not. The Dr. explained that since they did not see any signs of cancer anywhere else in Dad's body on his last set of whole body scans, the general recommendation is to have them done once a year....that is an insane amount of time for this crazy family to wait between scans, so he said for us ('the crazy family') we can do scans every six months. :)


There is a chemo drug (one of the few that cross the brain barrier) that Dad can take to try to prevent any cancer cells from growing, but Dad is a little hesitant to take it right now because he's feeling good and he's afraid of the side effects. I've been doing some research and asking others on forums about the drug and it seems like the side effects are minimal, which is good. Dad wants to wait to see how the scans go and decide from there. The other option is to sit back and wait for the cancer to show up again - I'd prefer to give the preventative option a shot, but Dad has to decide, so we'll see.


More to come soon - hope you all are having a good Monday