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