Well, last time we talked, I had just gone back to school. it was wonderful to be back in the classroom with my students that I had missed so dearly. We had a great end of the school year, and now 42 of them are high school graduates! I had an echo at the end of May, but my heart function (EF) was still just under 40% at that time, so I could not yet start the Stanford clinical trial. In the meantime, so I would not keep leaving myself untreated, we went ahead and started another chemo drug (Xeloda) that is administered orally, so I take pills twice daily for two weeks and then have a week off. While doing that they also gave me the other non-toxic treatment we had talked about before (Sandostatin). I'm currently in the second week of round two. I had another echo last week and now my EF is up to 50-55%, so now I should be good to go for the clinical trial. I don't know when I will start, as I'm waiting to hear back from Stanford, but I'm pretty sure I will need to finish round two of Xeloda and get a PET scan first. So far during these two rounds my platelets and hemoglobin have held their own. We're watching them very carefully.

My voice is definitely recovering, but still very slowly. I pray that one day soon I will be singing again.

Now that we're on summer break I will try to get plenty of rest while preparing for next school year. I have very few summer plans, since I don't know what to expect with Stanford, but I'm looking forward to having my dear friend Ani come out from Niagara Falls to visit next week, while celebrating Amanda's 11th birthday! The rest of the break we will just play by ear....

Thank you so much for your prayers and support--they mean the world to me.