Shana 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

We have been very busy this last week or two with various family and personal things happening. Once the kids left, I had to get back to work and I had a heavy schedule with 4 small trials in 5 days. Shana has had people working on our yard and back patio area and we had a nice little party after Maddie’s baptism. Shana has been feeling pretty good and she has been out shopping some and looking for some clothes and furniture. Today she went out looking for some books on playhouses since Lily will be coming back to visit again in a week or two. I guess I have to work on the play house this weekend if I can get it all planned out in time. Shana has a couple of infections she is fighting and her platulet count is very low so she has had to put off her chemotherapy until next week to get her counts up. Low platulet counts ussually indicate that the chemotherapy being used is too strong so they will lessen the dose some and they are making some of her less offensive chemotherapy drugs be administered every two weeks instead of every three weeks. The strong chemotherapy is being changed to once a month rather than every three weeks in order to keep her platulet counts high. We have found that giving her plenty of fluids and intravenious food gives her more energy so she spends a lot of her day hooked up to one device or another. Yet, she stays in good humor and appears to be surviving pretty well. We don’t go out a lot anymore but she enjoys having friends over or just sitting on her deck in the sun. When she dresses up, she still looks like a million dollars but I appear to be just getting older and balder. Sad. I found some pictures today from the early 90’s and I didn’t cause too bad a bruise on the eyes back then. I had hair, was skinny and looked young. What happened??!
Shana was involved in a little car wreck last week that bruised her up a little but she was not hurt seriously. She was slow for a few days and had a pain in her shoulder for a day or two but no major problem. She was a passenger in a car that got T boned at the Parks mall and they were lucky the collision damage was to the front of the car and not the side door. Anyway, everything is OK and she was back out shopping on the next available shopping day. Old habits die hard.
Shana is getting kind of bored during the days so if you want to call her or go by and see her, please do so. She is feeling good this week but next week she will be slowed down after chemo for a few days and then April & brood and Chrissy are coming into town to visit again. Shana has been really feeling bad for me after last week and she has fixed dinner several days in a row for me. That doesn’t sound like that much but she is proud that she feels good enough to do that for me and she is a great cook so I like it too.
During the bad rains last night, Wes and Antoinettes electricity went out and they and Bella had to come over to stay at our house for the night. Some winds and rain huh! Ya gotta love Texas weather.
Brad has become a modern urban gentlemen. He is taking piano lessons and jogging every day around Trinity park in FW. He hangs out at Barnes & Nobles reading classics and he listens to National Public Radio all the time. He is wonderful about coming over and helping his mother and I don’t know what I would do without him. Chrissy is ecstatic to be out of teaching for the summer. This year was tough on her and she is very happy to have the summer off. April is the same. She is overwhelmed with two little ones at home and she enjoys going to their beach house every weekend during the summer.
Some good news on Jeff McKim. He is at Harris Hospital, Harris tower room H404 and today he stood up for the first time in over 6 weeks. He is still having perception problems but he is moving his limbs on command and recognizes his wife and will do simple commands. That may not sound like much but that is a wonderful advance from where he was 10 days ago. The plan is to transfer him to Baylor Hospital for advanced therapy soon so they can work on his motor skills and memory and perception issues. Jeff is still very sick and he is feeble but he appears to be coming back strong and we ask for your prayers for him. His family has been very strong and resilient and they need our help. Hang in there guys.
I finally heard from Bee Rippy. She is back in the hospital and her cancer continues to grow uncontrolled. She began radiaton therapy today so that her pain may be reduced but her doctors hopes are limited and her options are not good. She is in a LOT of pain and the hope is that the radiation will reduce the pain some. She was in the hospital for 55 days and then sent home for about 3 weeks before she went back into the hospital this week. She desparately needs your prayers and well wishes. Things do not look good at this point and we need God to comfort her and bless her. Please say a prayer for her.
We have had too much sickness this year. We need a break —so no one else is allowed to get sick. That’s the rule now. IF Shana feels good next week, we may try to get out of town for the weekend to somewhere in Texas. We have to drive because we can’t fly with all of the medical liquids that she needs so we are looking for some unique places here in Texas that we haven’t been to before. Suggestions?? We have been able to go to the movies about 4 times in the last month so that has been fun and gets us out of the house in the evenings.
I am hopeful that the chemo that Shana is taking is doing some good. We occasionally see some signs that seem positive and we don’t see many negative changes–so life is good right now. It will be a while before we take another CT to see if this chemo is reducing the tumor. I pray it is but it is hard to figure out. We are getting along pretty well right now so even if it is just holding the cancer at bay, we will take that. Shana developed an allergy to Cisplatin which was the drug that worked so well on her tumor before so we can’t use that and we are stuck using the next best drug CarboPlatin and we don’t know how effective it is at this time. We will just keep trucking along as best we can and pray for the best.
Please know that we appreciate your well wishes and prayers and we pray that you won’t find yourself in this position. We have learned to value immensley our friends and family who help us so much.
Jim