Surgery update

For anyone still lurking out there, Chuck's surgery went according to plan. He had a restful night, and is already up walking around this morning. He says they are taking good care of him! He plans to go home Friday, and be back at work Monday.

The surgeons did not find any tumors other than the ones we already knew about. We'll know more about his further treatments once they get the biopsy back on the lymph nodes they removed.

Go Chuck - we love you!!!

Billy and the 4th

Who's coming for Billy's wedding/the 4th? I'll probably get the 4th off and I want to run the 10k.

shrinking nodes

Fantastic news. Chuck got the results of his most recent scan this morning and the lymph nodes have shrunk. Mary and Dad are going to look at the film this afternoon.

Carol

I met a CUP survivor!

I have a client who I just learned is a CUP survivor. He was originally diagnosed with prostate cancer, but it was later determined that this was not the primary source. The primary source of the cancer was never identified. The cancer had also spread to his kidneys, I believe. He was told it was terminal, and that he didn't have long to live.

He refused to accept this death sentence (he grew up in South Africa during apartheid, and decided that if he could survive that, he could survive this). He did some searching on the internet on his own, and located a promising clinical trial in Toronto. The trial was testing an anti-angiogenic as part of the chemo. He was able to participate (after having to sue his insurance company to get them to cover the non-experimental portions of the treatments), and has been cancer-free for 6 years.

'Miracles' do happen!

Lisa

Chuck doing well

Chuck is doing incredibly well. We had dinner with him last night and he seemed fine. He says he's tired, though. He drove straight home after the 6 hours of chemo arriving at 3:30AM. Mary was not happy. She wanted to have dinner first.

Has anyone talked to Chuck or Mary?

I haven't talked to Mom or Chuck since Saturday. They were planning to drive to Nashville on Sunday for the first round of treatment today. Has anyone talked to them?

Charles E. Ketner Family Pep Rally: The latest

Nashville Clinical Study

Finally, some encouraging news to share! Mom and Chuck just got back from Nashville at 4:30am this morning, after meeting with a couple of experts in the field of CUP. Bottom line - although there are no guarantees, and it certainly won't be the case for every patient, these physician's feel that CUP can be successfully treated and patients can become cancer-free! So much better than being told that you can't beat this thing or that there is no cure. These guys have been studying CUP for 30 years and are actively enrolling patients in a Phase II clinical trial, the details of which can be found at the attached link:

http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00360360?order=4


Mary can better explain how she found these guys and how, at the same time, Grandpa and she found a very recently published book on the subject. As it turns out, each of the doctors that they met in Nashville wrote a chapter in the book! Things are starting to fall into place. That's all for now. I couldn't wait to share the news. Positive thinking, all the way baby!

Love, Tiff

The Tennessee Docs

I was going to let Tiff post something about Chuck's visit witht he docs in Tennessee because she actually talked to Mary, but I figured everyone would want to know the news, so I'll do my best. Chuck has been accepted into the clinical trial, and will begin in chemotherapy in a week or two. It is not a blind trial - all patients receive the new drugs being tested. He will be traveling to Nashville for treatments.

These docs seem very knowledgeable about treatment of CUP - leaders in the field. It also sounds as if they are quite a bit more positive about his prognosis than anyone else they've talked to. Thank God we found them!

If anyone has additional information, or corrections, please post. Mary and Chuck should be getting back to Rockford later today.

Love,
Lisa