Today marked Jen's 14 month anniversary since diagnosis. This is a sobering milestone of sorts. It marks the median survival rate of patients diagnosed with glioblastoma. This means that half the people diagnosed don't survive to see 14 months. We are grateful to be on the positive side of this curve. The statistics are grim - of those who make it to 14 months, only 40% of those will go on to see a 2 year survival. Again, we are hoping to be fortunate enough to be among the 40%. Jen has become fond of quoting Han Solo from The Empire Strikes Back - "Never tell me the odds." She continues to bravely face this thing and if anyone can beat this, I know that she will. There is new and promising research that goes on every day. If anyone caught Joe Biden's interview on 60 minutes this last week, he talked about the death of his son Beau from brain cancer. He also talked about how he and the President have discussed pushing an initiative towards curing cancer much like Kennedy did to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. I hope they have the tenacity to follow through on this issue and that our current political quagmire doesn't impede any efforts to do so. Just imagine where me might be today if we had invested even a fraction of the money that we have spent on the wars of the last 2 decades. Apologies for getting a little political, but it is hard to fathom that this could not be an issue that all parties could agree upon. One can hope.
Jen's next scan is November 4th. We welcome your thoughts and prayers.
On Sunday, November 8th there is a race/walk for Brain Cancer taking place in the LA area. It is at Dockweiler State Beach in Playa del Rey. If all goes well with Jen's next scan she will unfortunately be 5 days into her 12th chemo cycle and most likely be unable to attend. I haven't planned for it yet for myself as she often needs help at home that far into her chemo, but if she is feeling okay I will probably try and make it out there. If anyone else in the LA area is interested please check out the following link.
http://www.heroesofhoperace.org/index.html
On a lighter note, Jen and I went to The Rise of the Jack o' Lanterns at Descanso Gardens this past weekend. Halloween has always been one of Jen's favorite holidays and she really enjoyed being able to see this. The pictures don't really convey the intricacy of all the carvings the way they look in person, but everything you see is made of hand carved and or painted pumpkins.
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It's hard to get the scale of this, but this tree had over 1,000 hand carved
pumpkins strung about it like Christmas lights. |
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There were many larger displays like this one each composed of many, many
pumpkins |
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| A sea of jellyfish - part of an undersea area |
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