For those of you who may just now be hearing about Dad's condition and need a little history of the situation, this post is for you.
April, 2006
After suffering from increasingly painful lower back pain for the better part of a year and finding no treatment that would help it, the cause was finally identified as Pancreatic Cancer, with the main tumor in and around the pancreas (already too large to operate on) with additional cancerous tumors in Dad's liver.
Dad immediately enrolled in a trial study for a new chemotherapy drug that was being tested that our oncologist Dr. David Close (Joe Arrington Cancer Center, Lubbock) recommended. While the initial results were promising, the drug did seem to slowly taper off and eventually stop working after a few months. Also, new cancer was found in Dad's back bone, and Dr. Close knew the test drug would not have any effect on it.
Dad was transferred to traditional chemotherapy, meaning to the drug that is commonly used for Pancreatic Cancer. He also went through several radiation therapy treatments for the spot in the spine, which seemed to work fairly well at clearing up that one spot.
The traditional chemo did seem to keep the growth at bay for a little while, but it also stopped working, and Dad discontinued all treatment, save pain management, around the middle of February. The last bone scan and MRI show that the main pancreatic tumor is growing rapidly, the spots in the liver are larger and more numerous, the cancer in the spine has spread to several places throughout his spine and down into his pelvis.
When the doctor discontinued treatment, he recommended the Cancer Therapy Research Center in San Antonio, which does a lot of experimental treatments. We made a trip down there, and they had a program that Dad decided to try. Unfortunately, complications from Dad's cancer have kept him from being able to begin that program.
