Lots of News

I flew to California yesterday to spend some time with Adrienne and accompany her to her doctor's appointments today. Adrienne picked me up at the airport, and after a nice dinner in the village of Claremont, we went back to the hotel and watched Grey's Anatomy in bed. She was quite tired after a few late nights but otherwise, she looks good.

We got up early this morning and checked e-mail. Hmmm, there was a message from DHL saying that Columbia is sending her a package. A turn down usually comes in a regular letter through the USPS, an acceptance comes in a package, but we didn't want to get too confident so we put it out of our minds for the day.

We arrived at City of Hope very early on Friday morning. Adrienne was scheduled for a pelvic ultrasound and was supposed to have a full bladder but, despite drinking 50+ ounces of water, her bladder wasn't full enough. So, we went off to the clinic to draw labs and wait for the water to go to the right place. Once again, Adrienne's port wouldn't draw and she made the decision pretty much right there to get the port out as soon as possible. After a needle poke, we went back to radiology for the ultrasound. Hmmm, the problem, an enlarged uterus on the last two CTs, looked normal on the ultrasound. Her oncologist compared the ultrasound and the last two CTs with her gynecologist, and he thinks the valproic acid caused some positive changes in the endometrium though he's not sure why. Just an interesting and positive development. There has never been a case where Hodgkin's Disease appeared in the endometrium but, as Adrienne's doctors have said, she doesn't follow the rules.

Adrienne had an echo and saw the cardiologist. Good news: her cardiac function is stable and near normal since she's taking the two cardiac meds. The doctor increased the Coreg dosage once again and wished her well in New York. The plan is to return in December and not see a cardiologist in NY unless she has a problem. That's very good news after the last few years of constant cardiology appointments and tests.

After we returned to CMC late in the afternoon, there was an e-mail from Columbia welcoming Adrienne as a visiting student. This was very exciting news. So, the plan is for her to go to NY for the summer and do her internship while living in the dorms at NYU. She'll come home for a couple of weeks in August and then she'll move into the dorms at Columbia. Luckily, they guaranteed her housing so that's one less thing to worry about.

It turns out City of Hope can't get Adrienne in to remove the port next week so we're going to see if we can arrange to have it removed here in Las Vegas. If not, it'll have to wait until she goes to NY. Adrienne will have another CT in about 10 days and we hope to see stable disease then. Her oncologist is very excited about the responses to valproic acid in other patients and hopes that Adrienne is responding well also.