A Battle Worth Fighting For

This warrior hubby of mine has been through so much and continues to fight with such diligence and strength, but I'd be lying if I said the past 3.5 years were easy... And just wanted to share a little bit about our journey and how we got to where we are today...

My husband Kevin was originally diagnosed with stage 2 neuroendocrine carcinoma, a rare aggressive cancer with only an 8% survival rate.

After traveling around the country getting multiple opinions from MD Anderson and the rest, we decided his treatment would be best here at UCSD in our local town, as it was the same anywhere else had to offer.

He moved forward with four rounds of chemo and 3 major surgeries including removing his entire bladder and rebuilding him a new one out of his intestine...(That surgery was no joke!)

After receiving the pathology we found that everything had been clear of that awful cancer, (margins and all) but there was the tiniest bit of carcinoma in situ, found in his original bladder. But as for him, he was NED (no evidence of disease) and since we had been as aggressive as possible with chemo and surgery the doctors were confident and hopeful for a cure...

We moved on with our lives for a wonderful 4 months when a routine CT scan revealed what looked to be tumors in his lungs. After having to remove 1/4 of his lung just to get a diagnosis, we found he now had metastatic stage IV utrotheila carcinoma (bladder cancer in his lungs with a 5% survival rate). He then proceeded with 30+ rounds of immunotherapy, which kept him stable for about 1.5 years, as well as 5 rounds of radiation, until we had another sketchy CT scan in December.

After having an additional lung surgery to confirm what was going on, we found that his current cancer was spreading. We moved on with a very hopeful attempt with padcev, (a mild chemo that has very promising results for bladder cancer.) Unfortunately he felt amazing on it but it did no good... We recently moved on to one last option being Ciaplatin�+ Gemzar. He just finished up 6 rounds and we are awaiting the results of his scan...

Plan being if the tumors in his lungs have stayed relatively the same we will move on to radiating them and begin another immunotherapy drug for maintenance.

Again like I said this hasn't been easy but it's taught us a lot...

1. To not loose hope or pay attention to statistics, if that were the case my hubby would have been gone years ago and medicine is changing every day.
2. To focus on what you can control, there's so much in this world that is out of our control and you learn that the hard way especially when it comes to cancer. Do what you can when you can, leave the rest to God.
3. This journey was never one in my wildest dreams but we've somehow learned how to find JOY through the journey, even when it's one you didn't expect to take...

XO, April