8/19: I had a Dream Leo was Walking

Today Leo's symptoms seemed slightly worse in the very early morning (before decadron) and late evening (also before decadron). He was drooling a little bit, seemed to be alternating fixation in his eyes, coughing a lot while drinking, and so on. He didn't complain of headaches. I relayed this to nurse Marylin during our morning talk, and then Dr. Szymkowski called. She started by recommending we space-out the decadron doses. Instead of giving 5mg every 12 hours, to give 4mg every 8. So another slight increase. Clearly, and we were told this initialy, decadron is heavily used to control symptoms. In addition, she said one or two things may be happening (although I'm not positive I got this right, so I'll ask again tomorrow).

First, if the symptoms get better, that may be a sign that there's just increased intracranial pressure from all the antineoplaston fluid that's being pumped into Leo, which causes more swelling. The antineoplastons seem to cross the blood-brain barrier and at the current doses he's getting 1,260mL of A10 and 90mL of AS2-1, for a daily total of 1,350mL. Obviously not all of this gets into his brain, but probably enough to cause some swelling. Second, if the decadron doesn't seem to help too much with the symptoms, that means "something" is happening with the tumor...

For the first time, I heard the following in relation to Leo. She said the tumor may be breaking down. Unfortunately in the same sentence she said that it may also have increased its own evil activity. The evil portion seems unlikely because these symptoms occurred virtually overnight and even this aggressive tumor doesn't grow that fast. Logically (but no one said these damned tumors are logical) that gives us hope for the best-case scenario: the antineoplastons are working. Marina and I believe this is the case. We won't really know for sure until the MRI in September (or possibly the one in November), so until then we just have to keep Leo on treatment and ensure his symptoms are controlled, even if that means more decadron.

Last night, during one of my countless nap breaks between Leo's drinking binges, I had a dream. I dreamt Leo was walking. He was off the decadron and looking like he used to (i.e. skinny). He was walking perfectly normally, but I did see he was still connected to the antineoplaston bag and pump via the IV tubing. He was walking on grass and it was warm because he was wearing a red t-shirt with a blue iguana on the front, blue shorts, and his favorite Thomas the Tank Engine gym shoes -- all clothes he owns. We'd love to see this soon or on a nice, warm day in the quickly-approaching autumn, but even next summer or the one after is fine, too. As long as he's going to make it, there's no rush.