Dave Sheppard

On Tuesday, August 2nd, Dave was slurring his words so I thought he might be having a stroke so I took him to Baylor ER downtown.  He wasn't having a stroke, but did have a brain tumor that was a metastatic melanoma from a mole that was a malignant melanoma 3 years ago.  They removed the tumor, but it left Dave with weakness in his right arm, hand, leg and speech problems.  He has made really great progress at in-patient rehab at Baylor and now has come home and will start a day Neuro program at The Landry Center at Baylor downtown for 6-8 weeks.  Last week he had an MRI and body scan. The MRI and body scan were not clear.  In just 20 days, 2 small tumors have grown in his brain that present as metastatic melanoma and a suspicious spot on his left lung up by his heart and another that is on his lower intestine. We just got back from the radiologist and he starts radiology tomorrow on his entire brain.  Hopefully, the small tumors will shrink, but if they don’t he’ll have to have focused radiation on them after this round, which is 16 days Monday-Friday for about 15 mins. each time.  We see the Oncologist to plan chemo treatments next Tuesday.  I have no idea when those will start or for how long. They won’t radiate suspicious spots on lung and intestine, hopefully chemo will take care of those and kill any other melanoma cells floating around there.  He'll try to attend the Day Therapy at Landry as much as possible working around the appointments to treat the cancer.  


Thank you so much for everyone's thoughts and prayers, keep them coming as we desperately need them.