Maria Crews Beiter

Yesterday Maria met with her oncologist to review the latest CT scan results. They showed that the mass in her pancreas is a bit smaller, and the lesions on her liver are stable—not huge changes, but still positive.

However, with CA 19-9 levels still at 6,500+, we have a ways to go. The cancer isn't curable, so the question is really how to balance the treatment with quality of life. Chemo is really unpleasant, and hard on the body, but we don’t want to back down treatment too much or we could lose the current momentum.

It's also hard to know which part of the chemo cocktail is causing the most unpleasant effects; nausea and malaise are not traceable to one specific drug. The doctor is going to try scaling back on one of the chemo drugs and seeing if that helps Maria feel a bit better during treatment, and, if so, they'll try reintroducing it at smaller amounts in future sessions.

At this point, Maria's been through 2 months of chemo; the doctor wants to keep treatment going strong for at least another 4-6 months. As he put it: this is not for the faint of heart. Please keep the thoughts and prayers coming.