By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Garry’s birthday is today. We are thankful for all of you and you have made this birthday especially memorable for my husband and for myself.

We are still downsizing but the new place is great and we are quite happy here.

Garry likes the oncologist he has now who is Indian. We’ve now had one American doctor, one from Australia, one from Lebanon, one from Vietnam and one from India.

He has to get a ton of labs done. Then they want to cut back on the chemo. They prefer he goes with oral chemo as opposed to a pump. The doctor says that to run full tilt at it will wreck Garry’s body and cause neuropathy which it has. His feet are numb all the time. He says that if they go full bore all the time if something resurfaces the chemo won’t work. Makes sense.

In three months Garry will have a CAT scan and a PET scan to make sure the lung tumor is gone and the rectal tumor is dead. This doc says that the surgery to remove the rectal tumor may not be the way to go. It does not improve things and is a monstrous surgery that is dangerous and would put him down for two months or longer. It also has a high failure rate.

All of that sounds good and right to me, the only thing that gave me pause is he will not call this curative as the Tulsa docs did because it is stage IV and has metastasized. But Garry can go into full remission and will just have to be checked frequently to make sure it does not come back.

Right now he feels good and is doing well. On his birthday that is more than he asked for and a real blessing.

If you want to help Garry out, you can give at GoFundMe. You can donate here. You can also donate on PayPal. My email there is [email protected] or you can use the PayPal link on the upper right side of NoisyRoom.net to get there. If you would like to donate some other way, email me at [email protected] and I’ll send you instructions.

We have been up to Lake Tahoe to go on short walks and take pictures and just enjoy the beautiful surroundings. In Washoe Valley and in Genoa on any given day we can see hundreds of deer. Wild horses roam the countryside here. The people are friendly and amazing.

Living in a place you love truly puts all things in perspective. To get where we are now we had to just turn it all over to God and that’s what we are still doing and will continue doing. We’ve lost so much but have gained so much in return. Thank you to each and every one of you!!!