1st meeting with oncologist

We had our first meeting with the UCLA oncology team to discuss pathology results and treatment options. This was a lllloooonnnngggg meeting. As usual, there were delays in getting the appointment to start on time, the cancer center was pretty busy for 7:30am on a holiday week! Once we got the ear of the doctor, he confirmed the diagnosis of a IV glioblastoma multiforme. In the week since we found out about the diagnosis, we setup command central in our home office and had relatives manning computers, doing research, making calls and sending emails to find out as much as possible about treatment options before going to today's appointment. So, because I was preppared for this meeting, we trapped the doctor with us for 3+ hours to get all of our questions answered. When I have more energy, I'll post all the details on the blog. Basically, we're going to start off with the standard treatment that includes regional radiation for 6 weeks paired with chemotherapy and see how that goes. If it doesn't seem to be controlling the cancer, we have an arsenal of other therapies, clinical trials, etc to try. Our next step is that tomorrow (12/29), we are meeting with a nutrionist/herbologist/accupunturist at Cedar Sinai that also happens to be a 10+ year glioblastoma survivior (this is an outstanding survival time BTW!). We feel that nutrition has to play some role in beating this thing, so we're going to check out what he recommends. On Friday (12/30) we have our first appointment with a radio oncologist at Hoag to talk about and prepare for radiation treatments that will begin as soon as we can get them setup. We're also picking up our chemotherapy pills tomorrow and will start them the same day that radiation treatment starts.