Back in the swing of it

Quite literally! As I type this update my Dad is out on the golf course hitting some golf balls around with his youngest brother, Robert. The last week has been better for him in comparison to how he was feeling a couple of weeks ago! He seems to have recovered from the bacterial infection and while he still suffers from fatigue, he was able to play in a golf tournament last week-end :) He is happy to be back out and about and his doctors always love hearing that he is feeling well enough to be out on the course. It's a good mechanism for gauging how he is feeling.
The results received on Monday from his latest MRI were positive. The last gamma knife treatment he received made marked improvement in attacking the new growth that had sprung off from the original skull tumor. It is hard to measure, but they could see lots of areas of tumor death and if they had to guess, they would estimate that it shrunk about 60 percent. The other two small tumors on his skull are still active, but have not grown any since the last MRI.
In the meantime, the second cycle of Sutent started this week, and so far he is handling the side effects okay. His white blood cell count is still not quite in the normal range and there was a slight drop in his platelets, both normal side effects from the Sutent. These are two areas that will be monitored closely over the next few weeks. We really, really hope and pray that this cycle of the Sutent doesn't end in chaos like the first cycle did!
The next measurement of how treatments are going will be a CT scan in late August. It will tell us how the Sutent is working and will hopefully show that the active tumors have shrunk. If not, it will be time to re-visit radiation options. But for now, a break from the radiation is much welcomed, and needed.
Next week my dad is going to see an Ophthalmologist who specializes in orbital surgery and treats both functional and aesthetic problems of the upper face and eye region. Among other things, he treats patients who have suffered from facial disfigurement and scarring from excision and reconstruction of cancerous lesions. It would be so great if he has insight into a way to treat all the swelling that my dad has around his left eye. My dad doesn't complain or say "why me" about the terrible hand of cards he has been dealt, but he does wish he could see out of his eye again. We remain hopeful that there is something that can be done to help him.
It's hard to believe that it is already late July! We are enjoying the summer months and the visits that we've been able to have with each other and with our extended family. All of my dad's siblings have either been to visit or are coming soon and my parents really enjoy these visits. They are such a nice diversion from the daily cancer grind. We know we are blessed to have such a close, loving family - and we don't take that for granted!
We hope that everyone is enjoying the summer and time spent with loved ones as well ~~ Tami and Family