January 23, 2013

Yesterday, Ken had his first MRI since he began the clinical trial. Unfortunately, the results were not quite as good as we had hoped for...his tumor did grow slightly. However, the study allows for up to a 25% growth in the first month, and Ken's tumor grew about 15%. So, he will be allowed to continue the trial for at least another month. Since it does take a while for the drug to really take effect, the growth may have occurred in the first few weeks of the trial, before the drug had a chance to build up in his bloodstream. The doctor said that this is not the first time that this has happened to someone in this study, so it is not unreasonable to attribute the growth to that. However, if the next MRI also shows growth, then that would mean that the tumor is not responding to the drug and Ken will not be able to continue on with the trial. While yesterday's news was not great; it was not terrible, either...the next MRI should be around February 19th, and we are hopeful the results will be better!