uplift

I have just returned from a week in Carbondale, Illinois, where I was serving as pit crew for my fabulous glassblowing sister’s MFA thesis show, which was spectacular.  While I was away Val met with the doctor and called me with this uplifting news:

The CT scan last week shows the piddly little “main” tumor continuing, bit by tiny bit, to shrink.

The final comprehensive report from the PET scan in late April shows that although there is still metabolic activity in the remaining, shrinking tumor, that metabolic activity is slowing.  Apparently there is a way to measure the rate of sugar uptake, and that rate has halved from a year ago (going from 9 point something to 4 point something).  So the small flame of cancer is flickering and dimming and dying down.

Also, there is NO sign of metabolic activity in any site but the one remaining tumor.  So the other smudges are dead!  The medicine continues to work.  Val’s lungs continue to heal.  Hot damn.

Meanwhile, she’s training for a 55-mile bike ride the week after next called Reach the Beach, a benefit for Oregon’s chapter of the American Lung Association.  Several brave, powerful-legged friends have signed on to ride with her, and others of us will haul dogs and bikes to the beach and back.

Thanks for all the good juju.

Deborah