For those of you who don’t know. Our dear friend and Tales of the TMNT writer, Jake Black, is battling cancer. Well via his blog Jake gives us a very encouraging update!
Here is an update I sent out to friends and family…
Just have had a couple of pieces of good news with regard to my cancer treatment, and we wanted to get the word out.
Back in June I was hospitalized for a week due to a very bad reaction to one of the four chemo drugs. That drug caused some permanent scarring/damage to my lungs.
On Tuesday this week I had a PET CT scan–a test to see size/locations/metabolic rates of cancer cells. The radiologist reviewing the report said that everything is shrinking very well, and that the cancer cells are no longer metabolizing anything. In other words, they’re dead. The chemo has worked. I’m not officially in remission, yet, but we are getting close! 🙂
I have three more chemo sessions to go. We want to make sure we really kill the cancer cells. My final treatment session is scheduled for September 24.
There was initially talk of following up on the chemo with six weeks of daily radiation treatments, which would last until around Thanksgiving in November. But because of the damage to my lungs, my oncologist isn’t sure. He’s going to discuss with the radiation doctor, and make a determination. If the radiation doctor is confident that he blast the cells without hitting my lungs, we’ll proceed. If he can’t we’ll be done September 24.
In the meantime, the fine folks at Mirage–the Ninja Turtles Company–have released a t-shirt to help with our expenses. If nothing else you can look at the shirt here (I’m not schilling…it’s just part of the cancer update. PLEASE don’t feel like I’m asking/pressuring you to buy them. Really, I just think they’re cool): http://www.ninjaturtles.com/html/scratch-shirt.htm
Michelle and I are so grateful for every note, kind word, and other display of support and affection we’ve received over the last four or five months. We’re almost done–just two to four months left. But I have to tell you, we couldn’t have done it without you. I’m most excited because I’ll be *allowed* to travel to NYC and LA–my two favorite places and my good friends-(and getting back to focusing on my writing career)-toward the end of the year.
I really hope to see as many of you as I can, and we can celebrate the end of this process in just a couple of months!
With great love and appreciation,
Jake Black
We love you Jake. Keep up the good fight!
By the way, you can now pre-order the T-Shirt which benefits Jake’s cancer fund (Cancer is expensive, dude!) by checking out this post!
