Stratton Success

We made it home from Stratton in about 8 1/2 hours of solid driving. Our Malerick / Coburn caravan was fun with the talk-a-bout radios keeping the cars in constant contact. We even managed to leave the house by 6:10 a.m. and no blow ups or tantrums. The weather got milder and milder as we moved west. We had a ton of fun and in contrast to the rain we had today in Ohio, the cold weather was much better for skiing than 37 and rainy would have been.

Now we had Christmas this morning and we tortured the kids by making them wait while Heidi and I showered, made coffee etc. They posed for their picture on the stairs which will make it onto our montage of a New Years card along with the Good News/Bad News letter we finished authoring today. We had no family and no plans today so we just lounged in our pajamas and the kids played video games while Heidi and I traded naps. Heidi is making the mother of all Christmas dinners and convincing herself that cooking is very over rated. We are having a no bake pumpkin pie, roasted chicken and salmon, spinache souflee, mashed potatoes and some fantastic Sanford Pinot Noir. Merry Christmas!

Water Works

We had a cold fun day of skiing. It was like 16 degrees but felt like 2 with the wind howling. The best part was we came back to the house and had running water. The skiing was so/so because they have not had that much snow but mostly because it was cold. We did all manage, the nine of us, to cram onto the gondola for a wind free ride to the top. Tomorrow we will try out Okemo and hope for better snow conditions. We are having fun and enjoying the real wood fireplace of the house we are in.

We have arrived at Stratton, Vermont. We are staying in a nice 4 bedroom house with our buds the Malericks who have two boys age 12 and 14. The 10 hour drive was made much better by our caravan with painted window messages on the cars declaring our destination. We even left on time at 5 a.m. per Mr. Malerick's instructions. One small problem is the water is not currently working at our rental home. The owner is feverishly working on a solution, meanwhile we are going skiing. More later.

Good News on Carcinoid

Great visit to the doctor today. The tumors in Heidi's liver are stable and one has even shown itself to be slightly smaller. It reduced from 2.1 cm x 1.8 cm to 1.8 cm x 1.8 cm. This is great news and will make our vacation much more relaxing. We celebrated with a nice afternoon lunch at Downtown 140 in Hudson.

Carcinoid Cancer Scan update coming today

It is early Friday morning and I have taken the day off as Heidi will get a comparative result back today from the Cleveland Clinic appointment regarding her tumor size. Since she has been on Sandostatin for the last 6 months we are very interested to see if her liver tumors have grown (which they did last time), shrunk or stayed the same. Appointment is at 11:30 EST so stay tuned.

Carcinoid Update on Heidi

I was reminded today, how scary it was to hear that my wife had cancer (not nearly as scary as it was for my wife, I guess). I got a call just now, from a woman who was just diagnosed the day before Thanksgiving with Carcinoid similar to Heidi's. She found our blog through the www.caringforcarcinoid.org website and called my cell phone. I am so glad she did. Because the first thing I did was scour the web when Heidi was diagnosed. You find a lot of bad stuff out there on the web if you look for it. It is great to talk to someone who is living with cancer. According to what I read, Heidi would have already left us based on the "data". Thankfully, that is not the case. Heidi is doing well. While there are still cancer lesions present throughout her liver, they occupy less than 5% of the total volume and they were growing the last time we checked, albeit slowly. She went on Sandostatin which is a monthly injection of a drug which has shown to slow the growth and even shrink the tumors. We have our next check and results at the end of this December.

We have ridden two Pan Mass Challenges with the Caring For Carcinoid Foundation and raised $25,000 for direct research on neuroendocrine tumors at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. That is empowering.