We met with Dr. Zachary Collins on Friday and really liked him. He is an Intravenous Radiologist and will be doing Brad’s next treatment. He will perform Y90 which involves a long mapping procedure on Monday 5/6 then a first treatment on 5/13. It will involve anesthesia for a test run and they block an artery that leads out to other organs. He will have to lie flat a lot and get imaging done so they know where to shoot the radiation. It is delivered in little beads that cuts off the blood supply to the tumor and the radiation is then distributed over 2.5 days. I’m sure a Google search describes it better but that’s the process in a nutshell.

The most important part of our meeting was Brad asked about life expectancy. He has looked at stats online and heard the words “this is non curative” but hasn’t asked THE Question. The doctor said this will add 6-12 months to 5 years and said we just don’t know. He was pretty bummed out but I told him we don’t know what things will look like after the procedure. While the amount of cancer in his liver has always been the biggest obstacle we’ve seen progress in shrinking it. Clearly he has lived a long time with a lot of cancer being in his liver so really we are beating it back with any treatments possible. It can be compared to heart disease…you just keep treating it and trying to be as healthy as possible. What we DO know is he feels really good. I told him to focus on how he feels each day and as long as we can keep doing things to prolong how he feels now then it is successful. He was SO sick when we started so in comparison the chemo has already given him his health back.

Our Spring has still been chilly so he has enjoyed the cold sensitivity fading. He is hoping for his taste buds to rebound and neuropathy in his hands and feet to fade. With this new treatment and plan he will only have a few dates on the calendar and the rest of the Summer should just be filled with baseball and soccer! Hopefully we will get some Lake days in there too! I had expressed to our oncologist that we just really wanted him to be as well as he can this Summer. While medically it was time to switch it up I think Dr. Pendergrass took that into consideration and I SO appreciate that.

Cheers to a good Summer and prayers requested for the kids as they work hard to finish the school year strong. Please pray for our mental strength, Brad’s physical strength to endure this new treatment and don’t take a minute for granted! Every day is a gift!

I’ll close with some fun pics of the kids doing their thing 💙💗💙