Updates:

The Erbitux chemotherapy is pretty tolerable overall. It doesn't bring a lot of fatigue and the rash has become more manageable as my body has acclimated. It costs a king's ransom, so without insurance I expect I would be in serious trouble.

We did the CT scans of my neck and chest as per the experimental protocol and received good news -- the tumors they are measuring were down about 30-35% with my oncologists split on the effectiveness being down to the Erbitux or the Erbitux + the experiment. I don't really care -- I'm THRILLED to see a reduction.

So what does this mean?

Well, it doesn't really mean anything other than the fact that my tumors have responded, that the response is considered quite good for this early, and that, as a result, we will stay the course. As my experiment oncologist said, this could keep going positively, it could reverse in a year, it could reverse tomorrow -- we never know. As such, I'm taking this for what it's worth today -- good news and we'll see in about a month what the next scan shows. One scan at a time and fingers crossed that things keep moving in the right direction.

Doing chemo (even this "chemo-light" every Friday is pretty annoying but I really can't complain -- things are, overall, going as well as I can expect. There is always the hope that I finally make a saving throw, but even if those odds are ridiculously high, I can at least say that the process has done some good and that I have bought some good time (probably) with side effects I can definitely live with.

As always, my wonderful wife has sat by my side nearly every infusion day and been bored stiff, but always looking after me. I can say I couldn't have done this without her and she is such a big reason I am doing this. I am lucky beyond words.

As always, thank you to my well-wishers and to everyone that is following and fighting their own fights, cancer related or not. I will check in again when I have more news and I hope that news continues to be good!

The Hellion