The past 24 hours....

Yesterday we got home around 1:00 pm. Cassandra reported very little pain and was very excited to be home. She had a good dinner and slept very well throughout the night. She woke up this morning with little to no pain but said she did feel pressure. At 7:30 am today Cassandra became unresponsive as she was sitting in a reclining chair in the living room. For 30 minutes, Cassandra's Mother and I kept her breathing and tried to wake her up. Her pulse dropped to 38 and for a while we all thought the worst. Cassandra finally started to come out of it at about 8:30 am. She opened her eyes and moved her hands and feet. The hospice nurse came and after talking with the doctors it was decided she had a stroke.

Over the past few hours Cassandra has been recovering from the stroke. She is talking, eating and drinking. She has even stood up to go to the bathroom with help walking. She is doing much better.

During all the chaos of trying to help Cassandra we were also informed that the new drug, Keytruda, has become available for her. Our oncology team is ordering it as we speak and ordering a set of CT PET scans for tomorrow. If there is anything that can potentially cure Cassandra or give her more time its this drug. This drug has the unique ability to fight the cancer everywhere in her body, no matter how small it is. Tumors can shrink or disappear and her cancer may have a chance of permanently going into remission.

As you can tell the past 24 hours have had a lot of ups and downs. Our main goal right now is to keep Cassandra recovering so we can get the scans tomorrow and start her new treatment.

I want to thank the JB Hunt Maintenance crew for the card yesterday. One of comments written on the card was "whenever you run out of rope, tie a knot and hang on" Cassandra has definitely tied her knot. Thanks again.

Eric