his ca19-9 numbers are four times higher than just over a month ago, before he started his latest chemo round. this tends to indicate that the chemo is not currently effective. also, his oncologist is very hesitant right now to give him any more chemo. he is already extremely weak, making chemo even more dangerous.

right now he is pretty incoherent. this might be a side effect of all the swelling he is having. the swelling continues to be a huge problem, and has spread to just about his entire body. because of this his pain medication (narcotics) are not being flushed out of his system in a timely manner. they did do a mri brain scan today however, just to check for other possible causes of his confusion.

he did get a blood transfusion today due to low red blood cell counts. it seems to also be alleviating some of the swelling. he also started another trial of tube feeding through his j-tube. they are starting slow, with a weak formula diluted with water. so far so good!

he recently had another study to see if his stomach is emptying. it was very taxing on dea, since it involves a series of x-rays over an extended period of time. it seems that there is still some sort of blockage between his stomach and intestine, tho a small amount of fluid is able to get through.

it seems he did win his battle with infection. there are no longer any signs of infection in his system. it sounds like he will be on antibiotics for another couple weeks just in case.