It's been a busy and interesting weekend. Jon's felt mostly good although he does have episodes of fatigue and nausea. Each day is a little better and he has walked Lakeland Hills both Saturday and Sunday. No weight lifting yet but hopefully next week.

We received a telephone call from Dr. Chue on Friday nighy, inviting us to a party at a fellow pancreatic cancer patient's home on Saturday afternoon. Her name is Sharon and she was diagnosed just a week before Jon. She hosted a party for patients and staff of SCTWC to celebrate her successful treatment. When we arrived at her home it was remarkable to see how fit and healthy she is...actually radiant. She is 60 years old and was diagnosed in October of 2006. At the time of her diagnosis she was "too busy" taking care of her sick husband to receive any treatment. Her husband passed away in November and she began treatment with Dr. Chue in December (and I think I have it tough?!). There were several other pancreatic cancer patients present as well as one metastatic breast cancer survivor. Three of the nurses, including our favorite, Dee, were there as well as the Chuemaster himself.

It was remarkable to listen to each of their stories. Sadly, they were all told by their original oncologists that they had only months to live. Fortunately for all of them they somehow arrived on the doorstep of Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center in search of Dr. Chue. In the rest of the medical community it is unheard of to for a pancreatic cancer patient to survive beyond a year and 6 months is considered remarkable. The most famous patient, Aaron Barret has survived four years and Dr. Chue loves to tell the story of how he originally presented Aaron's case to the Tumor Board at Swedish Hospital and they informed him that it was impossible for Aaron to have pancreatic cancer since he was still alive after 18 months. Dr. Chue had to prove to them again and again through scans, biopsies and slides that he was indeed this successful at pancreatic cancer treatment.

It was good for Jon to be around all of these survivors although he says that when he's away from treatment and other patients it makes him forget that he has cancer. There was a 70 year old Chinese women in our group who had survived pancreatic cancer over two years with a clean scan. She really kicked Jon's butt. She hikes Tiger Mountain every day with her husband and told Jon to quit worrying about killing cancer and start enjoying life. She reminded him that there was a reason that he got cancer in the first place and it was a message that he had to change something in his life. She has a PhD in Pharmacology and I totally enjoyed talking all the science and philosophy of cancer treatment with her.

On a more disconcerting note, Dr. Chue is having surgery on his eyes for glaucoma in November and will be on a 6 month leave of absence. We see him on Tuesday to work up the next game plan but he will be absent for this next phase of treatment. We will be seeing Dr. Cunningham at SCTWC and continue with Dr. Gosswami at UW. Most of Dr. Chue's pancreatic patients are taking a new oral chemo that is a derivative of the old Thalidimide from the 60's. It is used to suppress cancer growth once the disease is controlled. My hope is that Jon's next step will be that oral medication and possibly radiofrequency ablation to the lung tumor. He still needs to gain about 20 pounds before we move forward with another surgery or treatment. He's resistant to taking any oral medication but I'm hoping Dr. Chue will be persuasive on Tuesday.