Some unfortunate news

Yesterday was not a good day for the Paradee family. Pam and I went up for her regularly scheduled chemo appt. and a meeting with our Radiation Oncologist beforehand. After Dr. Wallace met with us and showed us the PET scan results from Dec.4th we went and met with Dr. Nunnink. He examined Pam and decided that he did not want to proceed with the current Chemo treatment because he feared that it might not be working. This conclusion was drawn from the fact that two areas lit up in the PET scan a few weeks before, Pam has been having night sweats, and he could palpate enlarged nodes in her clavicle region. He sent us for a CT scan and they drew some blood.
After getting home and settling the boys we received a phone call from Dr. Nunnink (approx. 6pm). He had the results from the CT scan and wanted to update us. The scan showed that not only is the cancer in those two areas not responding, it is enlarging. This is not good news. Pam is now considered in Relapse/Refractory category. This means that the cancer is not responding to the initial treatment and they need to take more aggressive actions.
So, they are admitting her to the hospital for three days on Tues. to start high-dose chemo treatment (something referred to as ICE). They will also harvest some stem cells from her in order to provide stem cell therapy when this treatment is done (two cycles, two weeks apart). The bad news about this is that this treatment only works 40%-50% of the time.
We are also going to be going down to Dana-Farber in Boston to get some more opinions and options for our situation. This will happen the week after treatment.
We are only thinking about ourselves as the 50% that it will work for! Please do the same and send positive energy in our direction. We appreciate all the help you have given us so far and it looks like we will be needing some more in the next few months so thanks in advance again!!
If you would like to read more about what Pam's current condition is then go to this link: http://www.vccm.net/content.aspx?section=typesofcancer&id=753 or go to www.vccm.net and click "Type of Cancer", Hodgkin Lymphoma, and Relapsed/Refractory.

We will keep you posted throughout the week,
Troy and Pam.