I came home from the hospital on September 15.  It’s been great to be home! My focus has mostly been on healing, following directions, and getting ready for my chemotherapy sessions to start.  An ongoing issue has been that I lost weight in the hospital, which I should try and get back before chemo.

So I’ve been exercising as much as I can, going for short walks, and doing limited workouts in my chair.

Chemo
I had my first chemo session on Thursday, October 3, on schedule.  The infusion took about 2 hours, and everything went fine.  I’ll have 4 sessions total, each 3 weeks apart, the last one taking place on December 5^th.

Tumors Shrinking!
Thursday was a very busy day. After my chemo session, I actually had a late radiation session and a meeting with my radiation oncologist.  He told me that my tumors, both of them, were shrinking faster than anticipated.  Yes, both of them!  Even before chemo, he noticed that my primary tumor in my lung was shrinking as well.  It was shrinking about 3 times as fast as normal.  My doctor said “I can’t really explain such a change.” He seemed quite pleasantly surprised, and baffled at the some time.

Abscopal Effect?
If anything, he said he might attribute this to a phenomenon called the Abscopal Effect.  Basically, debris that is formed as the rib tumor starts to fall apart due to the first set of radiation treatments end up becoming material that the immune system uses to mount a defense against the second tumor.  The radiation starts killing the rib tumor, creating a vaccine that tells the immune system how to attack the primary tumor! Just to emphasize, even to my radiation oncologist, the Abscopal Effect is still theoretical, and is a very rare phenomenon to see.

Today, Monday October 7, before my radiation treatment, they actually did a new mapping scan in order to re-calibrate because of the extra tumor shrinkage. 

In short, your prayers are working!  Thank you so much for your prayers and keep it up!  I actually need extra prayer because chemo is making it hard to keep food down. Hopefully this will just be happening the first week.

Don’t fear, but be smart!
Erik

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