July 23, 2011

Greetings to all:

It is high time to update matters concerning my health. Every time I was about to do so something new was on the horizon and I thought it better to wait. In any case, now is a good time to provide some new and additional details.

The most recent event is that this past Wednesday we went to our regular six week cancer doctor visit. This time his news was surprising and not so good. He explained that my cancer had mutated in a way that made the sunitanib (the medication I was taking for the cancer) ineffective. As a consequence I was told that I could not receive the medicine any more. However, he did explain that there is an even newer medicine as a back up to the sunitunib, but he would have to apply on my behalf to see if I would qualify to test it and to try to block the cancer in a different way than the sunitunib had been doing for the past year.

Only late Friday evening did we find out that I qualify for this new medicine, called Everolimus. The intended benefits of this drug are to "destroy and/or limit the growth of cancer cells in my body. This treatment may improve my current symptoms, and delay or prevent the onset of new symptoms. It may take several treatments (a four week cycle of one pill daily) before the doctor can judge whether or not this medicine is helping."

This medicine, similar to the previous one, will have a number of possible side effects. With the sunitunib I had some side effects that got progressively more debilitating with use, but I also avoided many of the other possible side effects that were listed. Of course, we hope and pray that the side effects of this medicine are no worse than we have had to undergo with the first one.

One significant difference with the new medicine is that there is no scheduled time for relief as with the sunitunib. In the past I tooke the pill for four weeks and went without it for two weeks. This was done to give the body opportunity to recover from the side effects. The new medicine will be taken daily on an ongoing basis. However, the dosage is smaller and it is anticipated by the doctor that the side effects will not increase in intensity but remain the same on an ongoing basis.

As you can imagine these developments were surprising and disappointing to us. It took a good day to deal with the emotional challenges that come along with this news. As always we recognize that also these developments are in the hand of our heavenly Father. We trust that His ways are far higher than our ways. Perhaps this change of medicine is designed to remind us of the temporariness of life; perhaps the new medication will not be helpful and the cancer will continue to grow. Only the Lord knows and is in total control of these things. We praise and thank Him for the wonderful joy He has given us in the past year by allowing us to experience many things that we at first thought would not be possible. He has answered many prays and has been gracious to us.

Now we continue to pray for healing and strength, but also for strength in our faith. We pray that we may put our trust completely in Him. We also value your prayers for healing, but also for a strong faith.

Yesterday we returned from a two night stay in Seattle connected with picking up our son-in-law from the Seattle airport on his way back from Brazil.

We are settling in to our new dwelling and are happy to live to the glory of our heavenly Father, praying constantly to fight against sin and temptations that continue to attack us.

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.