Back from Boston

It's been a little while since I returned from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I am going to try to give a brief report of what I learned. On the one hand I learned that the doctor thinks that I am responding well to Abraxane and that I should continue on that medicine. He suggested that since I am on a once every 21 days regiment, that I could also do the same with the Herceptin. This means that I get a triple dose of Herceptin when I get Abraxane, but that the next 2 weeks I won't have to have any chemo. I will only have to come in for lab work on those “off” Fridays. I started this new routine last Friday and it naturally took longer that day, but in the long run it will save me time.

One other thing that I learned was that the breast cancer that I have with the HER 2 factor has a proclivity for ending up in the brain. That of course was not good news, but just because the cancer has the tendency to go into the brain, doesn't mean that it is inevitable.

I have already had a miracle last year when after about 6 months of chemo, I went into remission. I learned then that only about 2% of people who have this kind of breast cancer have such a positive response. There is no reason to doubt that God can’t do another miracle and protect my brain from cancer. I will be having a CT scan in a couple of weeks where we will be able to see if there are any tumors there.

The trouble is, while HER 2 positive breast cancer has a tendency to metastasize to the brain, Herceptin, the drug that shuts down the extreme aggressiveness of this kind of cancer can’t reach the brain, because it can’t cross the blood-brain barrier.

This is the first time that I had ever heard of the blood-brain barrier, but I am beginning to learn more about it. It seems that our bodies were created with a natural barrier which keeps infections and other “bad things” out of the brain.

As I was with a group of women praying about this, one of the ladies prayed that the blood of Jesus would protect my brain from the cancer spreading in to it. As she was praying, I realized that I already had another blood barrier- the blood of Christ. His blood is even stronger than the natural blood-brain barrier.