The space shuttle blasted off for the VERY LAST TIME yesterday. NASA failed us in July when we were there and they rescheduled the trip. And today we find out that SUTENT has failed us. Failure. Failure. Failure.

I shouldn't be so hard on Sutent. She (I give anything with remarkable strength, tenacity, and wicked side effects a feminine personification) has been good to us. She's given us a chance to be in the lucky crowd, the chosen ones for whom the drug works, the elite class of stable disease...

Not today. Today we're like those other people. People who are told that they have "failed" a drug. We're not sure of the reason, but it doesn't matter. We are on to the next drug cocktail...Avastin and Interferon. Sutent is tired of blocking the blood flow to the branching arms of baby metastases and she's tagging off to her bitchy friends to take the lead. You've been great Sutent, take a break. Have a beer. Enjoy your vacation. We may need you again later.

Dad's scans today said he had "slight growth" in his lil' lung mets and "a couple of new small nodules ...along the right hemidiaphragm" and 3 small nodes in the paracaval region near the "expected region of the renal hilum which are new and felt to be metastatic." You grow something new and you're a failure. Tough room.
It's not that we didn't expect it, we knew it would happen eventually. Just sucks when you're no longer the lucky bastards.

We're a family of problem solvers. Question answerers. Dad's first response to the spectrum of child interrogation was a chemical equation.

Why does the toilet flush? Because, honey... PV=NRT.
Why can't I live at the mall? Why? Because PV=.....NRT.
Why does the tile go in the kiln green and come out red? Simple. PV=NRT.



Low and behold, in 11th grade Chemistry, Mrs. Dyer wrote the answer to all my questions on the board?!

My mouth dropped, my eyes wide... I was nodding.... My dad in-ven-ted that! Like oh my gawd, yall! My Daaaaaaaad seyyyyyz thaaaaaa!

And I counted the minutes 'til dinner when I could have a real answer to the question of "didja learn anything?"

So why... if microwaves work, and space shuttles fly, and for God's sake, my cell phone knows where I am, and drugs exist that make sad people happy! Why can't there be an answer for RCC?????

NED= RCC-{[(26*sumA)+B)]}/9

There. Just in case.

Blah,
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