Frequent Flyer

Happy spring! I hope you all had a joyous Easter! We are just finishing up our Spring Break and got to have a lovely visit with our sister Kristen. Gwen’s friends swung by from NY, too. Gwen, Justin, and Callie went to Florida to visit Justin’s parents (who work at Disney) for the first part of the break. Things have been busy around here… mostly for Gwen.

When last we updated, she was headed to Boston to see about getting into a drug trial for a different medication. The earliest she could see the doctor was the Tuesday of that week, I believe. They ran some blood tests and her white blood cell count was too low. She was told that the low count could have been a result of her Xalkori still in the bloodstream. Prayers went out for the count to go up. (A little boy a church added Gwen to his family prayers that day).

The prayers worked, because at the time of the next blood draw her counts were just high enough to qualify her for the trial. She began that Friday (one week after stopping Xalkori). The new drug is called Lorlatinib.

She needs to travel to Boston for checkups and to pick up her refills, basically, every three weeks.

At the end of March, she let her Raleigh Dr. know that she was experiencing some dizziness. Tests and scans were ordered right away (this was about a week ahead of when her next scan was scheduled anyway). It was determined that things were looking good and that the dizziness was some sort of lingering motion sickness from the frequent flying. You see, after that first visit to Boston, Gwen’s subsequent trips have just been day trips, like she’s some sort of fancy business lady or something. (You should ask her about the millionaire she sat next to sometime). Anyway, she is still having some trouble with this and hence was told NO spinning rides at Disney! None!

At her latest check up about a week or so ago, her scans were very, very good. Dr. G (here in Raleigh) said that she could not be more pleased with the results. The spots in Gwen’s brain are diminishing! The cloud in her lung is stable.

So this brings us to last week. Gwen and Justin drove back from Florida in time for Gwen to fly straight to Boston on Good Friday to see Dr. Shaw. The folks up north were pleased with what they saw, too.

Boston!

Gwen did not run in the marathon. But here’s the finish line!

Gwen is also participating in a second trial. They are using her blood to see if they can develop a blood test to “diagnose,” if you will, ROS-1. So when she goes up north, they take a lot of blood from her. Hopefully they can learn some stuff from this trial!

Happy Easter!