Dear Family and
Friends,
Steve
here. Greetings from Houston,
Texas! We seem to have brought a little
of Seattle’s rain with us, because that’s what it has been doing off and on
ever since we landed. But it’s warm rain! And when it’s not raining, you can still
enjoy the 110% humidity! Gotta love
Houston in the summer! So, we wander
around in 85 degree weather, only to pop into a building, any building, and
have the AC cranking to “popsicle” level, so we travel with sweatshirts
everywhere we go.
But,
cutting to the chase, here’s our update so far.
We had a very busy morning sitting in various waiting rooms. Gabrielle met first with an ARNP (doctoral
level, no less!), who asked a lot of questions and did an exam. Then she
brought in the M.D., Dr. Jazeiri, who gave her another once over, then discussed
the upcoming clinical trial. After that,
we met with the R.N. who is the trial coordinator who actually spent the most
time with us out of any of them.
Before
Gabrielle can enter the trial, they have to get a bunch of screening tests done
which include lots of blood tests, a stress echocardiogram, pulmonary function
tests, a chest and abdominal CT scan and an EKG. She has a couple of the tests scheduled over
the next couple of days and is waiting to get the rest of them lined up. My very strong hope and prayer is that these
can get done in the next few days because then she’ll be through with this
first step and can come home before Step 2.
It may be easier if I write it out in table form for you:
Step
1. Meet with research team, sign consent
for study and get screening tests.
Hopefully this gets done this week.
If that’s the case, then we theoretically could leave for home as early
as the end of the week till the next step.
Step
1.5. After Step 1, unwind at El Real
Tex-Mex restaurant for amazing guacamole, spicy enchiladas and a really good
margarita! Way cool! It was right next to a shop called Adam and
Eve with blacked out windows. Not sure
what they sold in there, but Gabrielle wouldn’t let me go in and
investigate. Instead, we went to the
Natural History Museum where we saw a really cute 3-D IMAX movie (wearing our
sweatshirts, of course!) on trying to introduce pandas back into the wild. Seeing baby pandas rolling around in the
bamboo forest is a good stress reliever for whatever the circumstances!
Step
2. Once the tests are done, the next
step is to get her surgery scheduled where they can harvest a piece of her
tumor and isolate the lymphocytes that are inside. These are the Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes
(or TIL for short). But right now, they
are scheduling 2-3 weeks out. That means
that she could come home till her surgery date and then pop back down just for
the surgery and recovery, maybe only for a few days. She will need to lay low at home to stay
completely healthy for surgery. Not the best time for social visits. While she recovers
from surgery, they will try and grow billions of those TIL’s in the lab, which
takes four weeks.
Step
3. This is the hardest and it takes place
beginning three weeks after the surgery.
We return to Houston and Gabrielle gets her immune system knocked out
and the new TIL’s put in. She has to be
in the hospital for 2-3 weeks on this part as she will be vulnerable to infections. She also will feel horrible, as part of the
medicine they give her to knock out the immune system causes fevers, nausea,
shakes, and horrible body aches.
I
have to stress that this is a very new type of clinical trial they are
doing. It is the one that holds out hope
for a cure, but it is still very risky and there are no guarantees. Gabrielle is feeling worse every day with
more abdominal pain, and the thought of being in such a trial and not having
any chemo at all during the several weeks of the study is scary. Even if the chemo hasn’t been all that great
lately, I am pretty sure it has been doing some good.
I
would like to ask for your prayers, as we are a little discouraged right
now. A tremendous battle lies ahead against
formidable odds. Thank you for holding
us up with your love and prayers, and also for the many generous financial
contributions that are supporting our expenses to participate in this
trial. You all mean the world to us.
Love,
Steve
(& Gabrielle)
p.s. sorry, no pics this time. Running out of steam.
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