Until two days ago, it looked like Paul was headed for a stem cell transplant towards the end of August. He was scheduled for a bone marrow biopsy this week to evaluate whether or not his lab results were good enough to proceed with the transplant. Because Paul has responded so well to his current chemo regime, his Kaiser oncologist and team were pretty confident the results would give the go ahead for the transplant. If the results weren’t quite good enough, another bone marrow biopsy would be done in September. However, a couple days ago Paul’s consultant at UCSF suggested that we could postpone the transplant a while and enjoy life. So, the latest plan is for Paul to continue on his chemo, skip the bone marrow biopsy this week, and get a biopsy done later in September. It usually takes a couple weeks for the lab results to come in. Then, if he is ready for a transplant, it takes another 4-5 weeks to set it up at Stanford. So, that would put the transplant around November.

Meanwhile, Tim has also decided to delay chemotherapy because his last PET scan showed no disease progression. Tim will request a follow-up PET scan be done in September to re-evaluate the status of his pancreatic tumor. Since he’s been off chemo, he definitely has had more good days. He still struggles with taste and appetite problems, but he continues to eat and maintain his weight. Tim has also resumed running and biking, although he's pretty slow at both these days.

All this gives us an opportunity to travel a bit before facing the challenges of transplant and new chemotherapies which will make us both too sick to travel or even leave the house. Even now, we have to be careful about germ exposure and energy expenditure while traveling, but we’re up for the challenge. First, we're off to see the glaciers in Alaska. We weren’t interested in cruises, so we managed to patch together day trips out of Whittier into Prince William Sound. We’re also scheduled to go back out to Wisconsin to see Paul’s dad later in the fall as well as a trip to Santa Fe. We’d even like to see if we can get ourselves up into the Sierra some time this summer for old time's sake. We can’t backpack or camp like we used to, but we can motel it and take a few day hikes.

We're both hoping that we will respond to our next rounds of treatment the way we have responded to treatments so far. This will keep us around for more good times with friends. We know that the love and support of our friends helps us fight the fight and stay healthy.

Thanks to all of you!

Crater Lake