Bad Feeling

I had a bad feeling about Killian's disease evalution yesterday. This week he'd pointed out a new lump on his forehead and some growth on his gums. They did the scans and, in fact, both areas are disease progression. There's also new tumor growth in another lymph node in the neck. I asked Phil last night if he believes that having a bad feeling can make something happen. We didn't heaviily explore an answer to that - it was just one of many late night flailing sessions. I remember Han Solo saying, "I have a bad feeling about this" just before Jaba's trash compactor freezes him as space junk. In retrospect, having 'a bad feeling' was not a which-came-first-chicken-or-egg conundrum. It was a comic understatement.

The docs talked about looking into other options: if that's what Killian wants. His initial reaction was exasperation. He said, "nothing is working!" The docs confirmed that nothing is working. I expressed more fear: fear of waiting for another protocol, fear of running out of time. Phil has felt this way too. Killian's reaction to our fear is to remind us that he's most concerned with his quality of life NOW. He was clear that he wanted to look into treatment options, and surgery (for comfort, not cure). Today he was equally clear that he doesn't feel that he wants a treatment that interferes with "having some life" - though he will consider suggestions from his doc, NIH, the Integrative Therapies folk, etc.

In terms of specific options being considered: his doc is researching -- has her ear to the protocol ground for drumbeats. I'll be researching as I can over the weekend too. A couple of tumor sites are sporadically bleeding and we're focused attending to that frustration right now.