...and I am grateful to say I am feeling better from spinal fusions day by day. My mobility has been limited and I was using a walker and a back brace to restrict movement when walking. I also am not bending, lifting more than 5 pounds or twisting my spine at all. 

I was able to get the 76 staples removed painlessly on May 17. My team has been very enthusiastic about how well I am healing. Managing the pain post surgery was a little miserable to be honest. Pain pills took the edge off but I was still pretty miserable for a while. After surgery I was scheduled to do “cyber knife” targeted radiation and I was worried the pain would prohibit me from being able to lie completely flat for an hour a day for three days because of the spinal pain. Luckily, my team helped manage it and I was able to complete the targeted radiation on the remaining metastasis in my spine on the 24th of May! 

After radiation treatment, my pain got a bit worse for a few days but now has improved substantially. Unfortunately, radiation imaging showed 3 small new spots in my brain. The spots are so small that they cannot be measured and there is no confirmation that it is new growth. The plan going forward is to allow the new chemo, xeloda, to work if it is metastatic growth. I am officially on the xeloda chemo regimen now and will continue to be restricting some movement for the next two weeks and be taking it easy.  Depending on symptoms and how well I tolerate the new chemo, we will be doing imaging again in a month or two.

I am grateful that the oncology, radiation oncology and neurosurgery departments have been coordinating so well at Stanford. It is such a difference and I can’t imagine going through this elsewhere.