The truck in my life.

well hey everyone this is obviously my first blog. i just wanted to start a blog and update everybody whose interested about my condition and stuff like that. yanno, cancer stuff. yeah. well first off i'm kaitlyn, im fourteen years old and im in 9th grade. i'm a cheerleader at my school. i love to dance, and hang out with my friends, and im trying to learn to snowboard! lol its not workin out so well atm.. but anyways.. i was diagnosed about 3 years ago (July 2005) with alveolar soft part sarcoma in my tongue. (check out www.alveolarspsarcoma.net for more info) so i was scheduled august 19th,2005 to have the tumor surgically removed. well in the meantime, we discovered more tumors on my lungs. but the surgery still went as planned and was successful, the tumor has not returned since. i've recovered better than expected. i can speak just fine and i just have some scars but they are my well-fought battle wounds (: well the tumors on my lungs are still growing unfortunately. And just this summer, while attempting to begin a clinical trial in san francisco, we discovered about 7 tumors on my brain. (which made it so i could not do the trial) i went under a special, direct-beam radiation about 2 months ago on a few of those tumors and the result isn't particularly clear but i guess those tumors became stable but the other ones continued to grow, according to my oncologist. well just this monday, we discussed some more options. two of which were kinese inhibitors. (something that will [supposedly] stop the enzyme which "tells" the cancer to keep growing). these were very expensive and unlikely to be approved by our insurance, or the company that makes the drug. but we are still going to apply! these drugs were suten, and nexavar (brand names i cant remember the correct names). there was also this trial possibly available in maryland. we have to wait 3 weeks before we hear back from the doctor on whether i am eligible. but this drug (which i forgot the name of get back to you on that later), was tested on 7 people with the same disorder and all 7 of them responded, as in the tumors either stopped growing or decreased in size. so this trial could be a really great thing for me! so hopefully i can do this and hopefilly it will work! i will keep you updated on everything! make sure to check back. (:


love,kate♥