Journal entry by Sheila Froendt —
I know it has been a while since the last update... mostly due to being pretty overwhelmed with everything the first few weeks after returning home from the hospital. We also had some pretty significant challenges and a bit of a setback with his incision not healing. Everything is going much better this past week. Bruce is on a wound VAC to help with healing and will continue to be for the next several weeks. He recently has gotten a lot of strength back and has been up and around a lot more the past few days. He looks great. We had a birthday celebration last night for our daughter and our granddaughter. I've attached a photo.
We had an appointment last week with his cancer doctor and were told that the combination of his chemo treatments followed by surgery should give him about a 75% chance of beating this cancer. His Oncologist is very active in bladder cancer studies. He follows all of the national studies very closely and involves his patients in the studies where appropriate. There are experimental drugs that would increase these odds, but such drugs are now only available to patients participating in studies, which is an option we are considering.
Going into Christmas week, we are feeling very hopeful that worst is over. We are focusing on our Blessings more than ever this year. And feeling so grateful for all of you and his wonderfully hopeful prognosis! Merry Christmas!!!
We had an appointment last week with his cancer doctor and were told that the combination of his chemo treatments followed by surgery should give him about a 75% chance of beating this cancer. His Oncologist is very active in bladder cancer studies. He follows all of the national studies very closely and involves his patients in the studies where appropriate. There are experimental drugs that would increase these odds, but such drugs are now only available to patients participating in studies, which is an option we are considering.
Going into Christmas week, we are feeling very hopeful that worst is over. We are focusing on our Blessings more than ever this year. And feeling so grateful for all of you and his wonderfully hopeful prognosis! Merry Christmas!!!