329 km, 11 hours, 5 highways, 2 countries and a biology lesson later...

We're finally home! And what a long day it has been.

Roswell Park Cancer Institute is a pretty impressive place! Its not just a one building hospital, its more like a campus, with many buildings and streets and even a valet service!!

This was our day at the hospital, in a nutshell:

We had our car parked (we're living the life), checked in, waited, signed paperwork, waited, went to the clinic, waited and waited and waited, saw the nurse practitioner, waited, saw the nurse, waited, saw the doctor, waited, saw the nurse again with the pharmacists, waited, saw the nurse, waited to be told we could go, and then had the valet boys collect our car, and we left!

We learned a few things today.

1. Interleukin 2 (now to be referred to as IL-2) is not a chemical or radiation treatment. It is a biological treatment. We all have IL-2 already in our bodies. They have synthisized IL-2 and inject that back into the body to boost the bodies immune system. It stimulates Natural Killer (NK) cells and T-Cells to attack the cancer cells, hopefully wiping them out. When extra IL-2 is injected into the body, its almost like pulling the fire alarm on the immune system and it goes crazy, declaring war on the cancer.

2. There are 3 outcomes of IL-2 treatment.

1. 1... it works and it kills everything and studies done in the 80's have shown that when it works, all cancer is eliminated and it never comes back. There is a 10% chance of this happening and they have not determined what makes one person successfull and another not.
2. 2... it kinda works, but instead of killing the cancer cells, they are just stopped in their tracks. They won't grow, multiply, or spread, but they will also not disappear. This outcome also has a 10% success rate.
3. 3.... it doesn't work, the cancer continues to grow, multiply and spread to other areas. This is NOT going to happen in Barry's case so no need to further discuss it!! :)

3. Barry is going to start his IL-2 treatment on August 31. Less than 2 weeks away. He will go in on the Monday, and every 8 hours they will give him an injected dose of the IL-2. They will continue this until his body is unable to take any more. He may skip one dose, depending on how he is coping. Then he will come home on Saturday, and recover for a week. Then on September 14 he will go back in for another week, get injections every 8 hours, and come home the following Saturday. After this cycle (consisting of 2 admissions) he will have 6-8 weeks off. This time off will allow his body to work to help his body fight the cancer. Unlike chemo, which attacks right away and results are seen very quickly, IL-2 works over time. After the 6-8 weeks, they will do a CT scan and possibly an MRI to check the size of the few spots of cancer he has left (in his chest and lung). If it has worked, or the cancer has been stopped, they will do another cycle of 2 admissions. If it doesn't look like it has worked, which it will work, they will figure out another course of action (which we didn't even ask for an elaboration because this will not happen).

4. Daniel is not allowed to stay at the hospital with us. Barry will have a private room, with a cot for a family member or friend to stay with him. They, however, do not allow children to stay. To further add to the frustration of this, they only allow limited visiting for children, and as of now we are not sure how limited. So we are at a cross roads as to what to do. The nurse is looking into options with the hospital social worker. They reccomend that someone stay with Barry, but our options are limited, really, to me. And leaving Daniel for a week is really not an option. Barry's week long hospital stay (for his stomach operation) was very hard on Daniel. He had a few meltdowns because he missed his Daddy, and now he is very apprehensive about me leaving, and has let us know quite clearly he doesn't like me leaving, which is not like him at all. But we will wait for the nurse to call back, hopefully with a good solution that works for all 3 of us!

Dr. Wong seemed very nice. He was a rapid blinker, which I found very distracting, but Barry didn't even notice this! lol He was very kind, explained things clearly and very well, answered all our questions, and made us feel positive about the treatment. His staff all work as a team, and I think things will go very smoothly. We were told that Roswell Park handles the most IL-2 treatments in the country (USA), so this is the place to be, apparently! I feel confident that Barry will be in the best hands and they are prepared to handle anything that Barry's body will throw at them!

Ok.... I think thats enough for today. I am sure I have missed things, but really, its 1030pm and I am tired! Daniel asked to go to bed as soon as we were home, Barry is sleeping on the couch, and I am going to crawl into bed as soon as I click the "publish" button.

Thank you to everyone for your positive thoughts! There are people all over the world rooting for Barry and offering us support, and that keeps us motivated and feeling positive about all the rough patches. If you are reading this, please let us know by "following" our blog. Just click the "follow" button to the right of our latest entry. Seeing our supporters makes us smile!! Thank you :)

Good night :)