October 22nd

Hi

First let me thank everyone (old friends and new friends) who helped us meet with so many wonderful doctors and researchers during the last week.  What we found out is that not only is Tia unique (well, I guess we all knew that) but so is her cancer.  No one has seen a case exactly like hers.  Therefore, there are lots of different opinions as to the next course of treatment and even more regarding the follow on course.  Whether we go to radiation first or chemo? And if we do go the radiation route do we do whole brain or IMRT? Or do we use a gamma knife in lieu of radiation? Or do we wait for an exciting new phase one trial in high intensity ultrasound? And what do we do after the first round...

As we made the country-wide research trip we kept looking for that low-risk, high-reward solution.  We basically set up a 2x2 matrix of risk and reward. We knew we didn't want to be in the high-risk/low-reward box and were hoping to get something in the low-risk/high-reward box. Unfortunately all options seem to fall into the other two boxes. We thought this would be the case before we went off, but still wanted additional information. 

Our meeting with Steve was on Friday at noon.  I went in to work early on Friday and for all those with Bloombergs you know there is always a daily quote.  As I logged on to the Bloomberg on Friday, the quote was "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't". Weird.

We have come full circle and concur with Dr. Forman's advice of starting IMRT (radiation) at City of Hope with Dr. Wong next week.  We go in on Monday at 8:30 to start the mapping of the radiation fields and all the prep work and hopefully start the actual radiation later this week. Once I know the schedule I will send a separate email to all of you who have indicated you can drive with Tia.  The current plan is to do 4 weeks (20 treatments) of radiation - so that will be most of the month of November.

Have a great weekend

Jess/Tia and the girls