Important Alli Update

I wanted to give all of you an update on what has been going on with us over the last couple days.  As Alli has always said, wherever she fights, you fight; though this has will be the toughest blog for me to write.

Alli was admitted to the hospital on Friday night.  She got very, very nauseous near the end of the day at work so I started to drive her home.  In addition to getting sick on the way home she also started to not recognize where we were even though we have driven that stretch of road countless number of times.  As we started to head to the UW ER department Alli started to get more delirious. 

Starting that night and over the following days they did numerous different scans of her brain and her chest.  The scans show that the melanoma spread to Alli’s brain cavity, spinal fluid, and around her spine.  They believe that the melanoma may have disrupted the flow of fluid in her head and irritated the brain that has been causing her nausea, headaches, and may have caused a seizure that led to the deliriousness.  She has also been experiencing challenges in her short term memory where most things don’t stick in her memory.  So remembering conversations, if she saw a doctor, etc are very hard for her right now. 

Alli started radiation therapy on her brain yesterday.  She will have it every weekday for the next two week, with the last scheduled treatment on Christmas Eve.  The hope for the treatment isn’t that it will kill all the cancer but that it will reduce the symptoms she has been having lately so she is more comfortable.  After finishing up the radiation the plan is for her to go back on an immunotherapy drug, a different brand than what she was on previously, with infusions every three weeks.     

Now for the hardest part… Given how her melanoma has reacted to all the previous treatments they think there is a slim chance that it will stop or push back the melanoma.  Their primary hope is to slow down the cancer.  There is never an exact science to this and people beat the odds and prove them wrong but they think it could be that she has just a couple months left.  As most of you know Alli is a very determined woman and is doing everything in her power to beat the odds.  We need a few more prayers as she picks up her boxing gloves again for her and the treatments to beat the odds. 

F*ck cancer.  Wherever she fights, you fight

Barrett