With the help of the appropriate pharmaceuticals, Lisa said that last night she had the best sleep she's had in months.  Other symptoms remain, and we spent the entire day going back and forth between the two cancer centers in town.  We met with the doctor early this morning, and based on Lisa's symptoms -- especially the swelling I mentioned yesterday -- he had us go over to the other center to have ultrasonic and angio-CT scans done.  They found that although she does still have compression/narrowing on the vessels around her heart, the swelling is most likely being caused by a blood clot in her carotid artery in her neck which has caused narrowing ("stenosis").  She also has a very small clot behind her infusion port.  We went back over to the oncologist's office to discuss, and Lisa will need to be on daily injections of a blood thinner (Arixtra).  I've given her heparin injections in the past, so I can handle it rather than having to go to the cancer center every day for it.

The CT scan showed that the cancer is stable ("patent") and has not grown since the previous CT, and that's an indication that the current chemo mix is having a positive effect.  We're hopeful that another cycle or two causes it to actually shrink.  Because of all the other things that Lisa is going through, she's not going to have chemo treatment this week, and it will be administered next week instead.

In addition to the blood thinner, the doctor wants Lisa to slightly increase her steroid dose, stay on a round-the-clock dosing of her pain medication, and to use sleep aid medication (Lunesta) at bedtime.