Startin' to come together, Pepper!

Today's treatment just started, and we have two pieces of good news:

1) Dr. D is going to try the oxaliplatin again next week, with a pile of pre-meds to try to avoid another reaction. Kurt is going to get a ton of steriods, benadryl, etc. and they are going to infuse the oxaliplatin over 6 (!?!) hours, instead of 2. So our Fridays are going to get a little longer, but it sounds like we can continue the same course of treatment. And, our research nurse checked out the trial protocols -- evidently Kurt can continue in the trial even if he can't get the oxaliplatin.

2) Every week, before treatment, Kurt gets blood taken -- mostly to check his white blood cell counts, but they give us a full panel of results. One of the items checked is three different liver enzymes, which indicate how well his liver is functioning. That's important both because it can indicate the tumor presence in his liver and because the liver helps flush the chemo out of his body. Anyhow, when Kurt was diagnosed, those enzyme numbers were all way high - not liver failure high, but high enough to indicate the liver was stressed by the tumors. Today's test results showed that -- for the first time -- one of those numbers is back in the normal range! Yay! Like all of these numbers that we get, it doesn't really prove anything conclusive, but it shows that everything continues to move in the right direction.

Beyond that, not much to report. Kurt is dozing and treatment is going fine.

[Bonus points to the first person who can post a comment citing the movie from which this post title comes from]