Helping out, when we feel helpless!

On the 21st December we met with Shane's Oncologist for the results of his CT scan. Unfortunately she didn't give us good news for Christmas and we all left feeling pretty deflated.

Shane had been in remission since 19 October when treatment finished, but never really seemed to bounce back like the oncology team expected him to. He still has some major pain issues we are dealing with too, so they ordered an urgent CT scan.

The results are in and Shane has Stage IV Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer with spread to the lymph nodes in his chest and abdomen and spots on his lungs (still to be monitored to see if they are cancerous or due to his bout of pneumonia a while back). This is considered terminal.

Shane has 3 options:

- Sit tight and wait to see what happens

- Start chemo with gemcitabine/abraxane combo which is not funded by the NZ Government. $1000 per cycle (4 weeks) - capped at $9000

- Start a chemo called folfirinox which they are concerned will be too hard on Shane.

These options will only buy him time - maybe an extra couple of months.

Shane has decided against chemo and has just started taking Te Kiri Gold which is a clinical trial and the same treatment Colin Meads has had great success with. We are hopeful that this will be the miracle cure, or that it will at least buy more time to make beautiful memories with family and friends.  Reports we have heard so far sound amazing!! A bit of hope to cling to...

To everyone who has helped us so far with all sorts of things - thank you so much!! Its near impossible to thank you all seperately, but you have helped so much and we appreciate it more than we can express!

We will be taking on some fundraising in the near future - first up, a garage sale which is a work in progress. We will continue to keep you all updated when we have more news.