The best weekend ever!!!!!!

That's right, we had the best weekend ever, which could only mean one thing......we finally were able to go home!!!!

I'll recap the last week since I have been too busy to post the updates as I should.....

Brian had the PET scan last Tuesday and we were scheduled to go in to the dr on Wednesday for the results and to be admitted for chemo again. Since nothing is easy for Brian, and for some reason he likes to be difficult, he came down with an ear infection Tuesday night. He was in a lot of pain and when we told the dr the next day, he gave Brian some antibiotics and sent us back home again. He can't start on chemo with any kind of infection so we had to delay treatment until he gets better. We were able to get the results from the PET scan and the dr says the cancer is 99% gone!!! Praise God!!! They don't see any spots in his stomach anymore (that is where most of the tumors were) and there is only one small spot under his left arm. That spot has been there all along and hasn't been responding to the chemo. The dr decided it would be best to continue with the chemo treatments through the 8th round and if it still hasn't responded after the 6th round we would look into more options of what we can do. Worst case scenario would be a stem cell transplant, so we are desperately praying that Brian won't have to do that. It is a major ordeal and something you can only go through once in your life with your own cells (after that you would have to have a donor and it would be a major major ordeal). The good news though is that we aren't even sure if the spot is cancer. Brian tried to have a needle aspiration of the spot yesterday, but after they poked around under his arm 10 different times they weren't able to hit the spot. They tried as many times as they could, and probably as many times as Brian could tolerate, but apparently since it is in a fatty area it kept moving around on them. We were hoping that test would be able to tell us if it was cancer or not, but unfortunately we still won't know and will have to continue treatment as usual. He is getting a CT scan now and he is scheduled to be admitted into the hospital tomorrow to start on his 5th round of chemo again.

Now on to the happy stuff....our trip home!!! We really weren't even thinking or anticipating going home last week, which probably made it even better. When the dr postponed chemo because of the ear infection he said he would schedule the needle aspiration for later that week and we would have another appt with him Fri or Mon. Then on Thursday morning when we checked the online schedule we didn't have anything scheduled until Monday morning!!! We both lit up with smiles and decided that we should celebrate with a trip home. We threw everything in our car and left within an hour. Brian said he felt like he was escaping from Alcatraz. We were just waiting for the dr to hunt us down and drag us back. Then, 2 hours into the trip the home, the hospital called confirming his appointment for FRIDAY!!! We frantically called our dr assistant and she said the dr had requested everything be moved up and they had moved the Monday appt to Friday. But when she looked into it further, it was just a consultation for the needle aspiration so she called in some favors to see if they could do that appt by phone. In the meantime we pulled over at a gas station and cried and did a lot of praying. She called us back and was able to get the consultation done over the phone. We were so excited and made sure to take her cookies on Monday. Needless to say we would have been upset to have to turn around for a 15 minute consultation and that be the reason we didn't get to go home.

The weekend at home was exactly what we needed to relax and destress. Since we hadn't planned on coming home we didn't tell anyone until we got there and even then could only let a few people know since we were so limited on time. We were able to see our dog, Allie, and were glad to know that she hadn't forgotten about us and still remembered most of the things we had taught her. She's almost out of her puppy stage now and is twice as big as she was when we left. We were also able to spend some time with family and visit a few friends. Brian felt the best he has felt yet when we were there and we were able to forget for a few minutes about the cancer and just enjoy a bit of normalcy. Being at home really cheered him up and I'm sure he felt better because of it.

We often wonder if it would have been easier to stay in Dallas and get treatment there since we would have been surrounded by so many friends and family, but we know we are in Houston for a reason. Since Brian's cancer is so aggressive and his chemo so tough, MD Anderson is one of the only hospitals in the country that would even give him this treatment. Any other hospital would treat it with weaker chemos and we weren't willing to take chances since Brian's cancer was so far along when he was diagnosed. Please continue to pray for Brian as he goes through treatment and for the one remaining spot under his arm. God answered one of our prayers by letting us go home for a few days and now that we are back we are ready to endure another 4 months of treatment.