First Round Down

Pam officially completed her first round of chemotherapy today. She started with a full day last Thursday, rested for a week, and finished this morning. Overall she feels OK and is doing a good job optimizing periods of rest with being active when she feels up to it.

The vacation sailing in the San Juan Islands was a great adventure and time of healing. Pam really enjoyed sharing the vacation with various friends and family along the way. They also ate like royalty every night - including Pam's signature crab cakes using freshly caught crab from Captain Bruce.

Pam will have outpatient surgery on September 9th to put in a new port. For her first round of chemo they used a traditional IV. Pam's second round of chemo treatment begins September 10th and finishes on the 17th (the schedule posted previously on her blog is incorrect).

Throughout the last several weeks, Pam has received many phone calls, cards and well wishes that have been very meaningful to her. Thanks for your wonderful support.

We will provide another update in the next month or so. Also, we have posted some updates to the lotsa helping hands web site with a few requests for help. We will continue to update it with new requests along the way.








Pam - spending some quiet time on the boat writing in her journal











Bruce, Pam and Abbie enjoying dinner in Friday Harbor


Captaing Bruce taking his crew to Deer Harbor

Bruce, Pam, Abbie, Steve, Peggy and Emil at Vinny's

Adventure - then Treatment

Pam is almost fully recovered from her less than optimal hospital stay. During her most recent round of doctor visits, they were all very complimentary about how fabulous she looks and is doing.

She and Bruce left on Friday to get away from the heat and enjoy a couple weeks sailing in the San Juan Islands. They have only been there for a few days, but are having "a ball". They have already sailed to a few different islands, have met up with the Reents' for dinner, and enjoyed some fishing and crabbing along the way.

Pam's first chemotherapy treatment is scheduled for August 20th. After consulting with the doctors, they decided to postpone the start of treatment by a couple weeks so they could first enjoy some time at this favorite (and practically annual) vacation destination. The doctors cited a couple of studies indicating that waiting this amount of time does not hurt anything.

The chemotherapy schedule will include six, 4-week cycles. In short - she has treatment on the first and second Thursday, gets the third and fourth off, and starts over again. Therefore, the scheduled treatment days are as follows: Aug 20, Aug 27, Sep 17, Sep 24, Oct 15, Oct 22, Nov 12, Nov 19, Dec 10, Dec 17, Jan 7, Jan 14. Sometime between Aug 27 and Sep 17 she will have out patient surgery to put in a new port.

The medicines will be Carboplatin and Gemcitabine and will be administered intravenously. Both are typically easier to tolerate than the medications she took during her last round and she may not even lose her hair this time (which is looking so hip and stylish). Although it is tough to face a series of chemotherapy, Pam is doing impressively well and is very focused on positive thinking. We hope you are too!

We will try to post sailing trip photos soon.