Shana Bearden

We have had some disappointments this week. Shana’s blood counts remain too low for her to receive additional chemotherapy and she broke down crying at the doctor’s office when they told her. She sees this as a very worrisome thing because if she doesn’t get chemo then her time is lessened dramatically. She is scheduled for a CT scan on July 9 but we won’t get the results until her doctor gets back from his vacation which will be another week or so later. Some good news, it turns out that a friend of mine sits on the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation board and she is offering to help us with research and support. I am looking for a new combination of chemotherapy that will not knock down Shana’s blood counts so low. We also need to have a good gameplan when she runs out of tolerance for her current regime. Shana has been suffering from a series of infections and other problems that have made her skin extremely thin and she has to be very careful about what she touches or that touches her. She has been feeling pretty good overall but she is getting depressed because of the troubles with the chemotherapy and the obvious growth in her waist line due to the tumor growing (we suppose). She told me yesterday that she did not think she would live another year and that is the first time she has ever said that to me. I hope she is wrong. It won’t be for lack of trying. She is now well past the standard expectancy for peritoneal mesothelioma so maybe we can shoot to create some new records. Please pray ever more seriously for my lady. She doesn’t deserve this.
I went to see Jeff McKim on Sunday. He is able to walk with help and speaks often very clearly and sometimes he gets his words jumbled up. He is moving this next week to another rehab facility in Irving and then possibly home. He told me that he would be back at work soon and his memory and conceptual skills seem intact. His legs are wobbly and his speach a bit hard to understand sometime but otherwise he seems to be in fair shape. He is lucky and dodged a big bullet.
Pray for the sick please.
Jim Bearden

6-25-09 6:00 P.M. — Well, we survived the last couple of weeks pretty well. All the kids and grandkids were in town for Fathers day and we had a good visit. The week before I was terribly busy and Shana had her chemo treatment so for much of the time that the kids were in town she was feeling poorly or more accurately very weak and wore out. Her blood counts are getting very low so they have cut back on the frequency and the strength of her chemo treatments and that may not be good in the long run. There appear to be some signs that the tumor may have begun regrowing and possibly spreading but we really won’t know for sure until we have a CT scan sometime in July. But I see little things that may not indicate that the tumor is under control and I can tell that Shana is concerned about those things as well. She remains a trooper but since she became allergic to Cisplatin, the replacement drug Carboplatin just does not seem as effective as the other. We both got a bit concerned when I asked the doctor what treatments were available if she becomes allergic to Carboplatin and he said that no other treatments work as well and that we would have to try some trial treatments if it comes to that. He then pointed out that almost no one does research on this cancer and the treatments we have been receiving have been just a “best guess” of what would work based on similar tumors. Seeing that we may have to take a shot with experimental treatments in the not too distant future is worrisome. I hope for some breakthrough soon so that we continue to have alternatives. Please pray for a science breakthrough on this disease so that we can fight this some more. I’ll take a live Shana anyway I can get her so I need some help from the medical field. Please pray for Shana.
Jeff McKim is doing better at Baylor rehab in Dallas and Bee Rippy is in very serious condition in Mineral Wells Regional Hospital. Larry Williams is finally getting some intravenious nutrition and hopefully he will begin to recover some of his weight and his health. Please pray for and think of all the sick persons who need help.
Jim