Monday, June 15, 2009

Decisions

The weekend is over and I am anxious to call Cancer Care to make sure that whatever treatment is chosen will start this week. My pain in my mouth has been getting worse over the weekend and I am eager to attack the cancer.
After leaving some messages, Dr. Leylek called me back and invited us to meet with him early afternoon. He explained to us that there is a discussion around the clinic between using the traditional treatment of radiation and chemo right away versus a newer method that suggests 2 months of heavy chemo followed by radiation.
The latter method has shown some advantages in a recent study and is favored by Dr. Maksymiak, the medical oncologist. It is, however too new to draw definite conclusions and therefore Dr. Leylek would favor the traditional method. In the end he points out that the decision would have to be made by myself. Both approaches are respectable and have, in his opinion, equal chances of success.

Great! I fuss for days when I have to buy a new pair of pants. How am I going to decide what treatment to choose that could potentially decide if I live or die?
Angela passed on some research data to Donna and another colleague to see what their opinion in the matter might be.
I told Cancer Care that I would have a decision by tomorrow.
A friend of ours emailed us a prayer a week ago that said: "God, please give Angela and Olaf the wisdom to make the right decisions..."

God, please do.

2 comments:

Laura said...

Not only are you courageously facing all these decisions and upheaval, you are willing to share with us. You are both truly amazing people. Although it's difficult to hear about all the challenges you are facing and the pain you are in, it is so helpful to enable us in some small way to understand. Thank you for the blog. And know that you have the love and support of all of us.

Laura said...

Sorry that my dumb blogger name comes in as El Grande Boss - seems a bit irreverent on your blog. I'll see if I can correct that for the future. Laura