CLAUDETTE #2

5/3/07

Hi All-

Thanks to everyone who has been sending flowers, emails ,phoning in, mailing ,coming by etc etc. All the support has been really overwhelming and much appreciated. Claudette wants you all to know how much she is touched by this outpouring of love. It has helped us build a great positive vibe around here! Hope you all will excuse the mass emailing of this info but it's impossible to call everyone individually given the numbers of people who want to know how Claudette is doing. So....

To update every one from the last email, Claudette continues to feel better each day. Of course some days are better than others and we will surley have our share of fucked up, miserable days ahead. All your support helps us get thru these times.

The last of the 10 Radiation treatments was yesterday (Wed 4-2) They have apparently helped her quite a bit because her pain has become much less, much more manageable and the Vicodin much more palatable. She is really alert, lucid, mobile and thinking clearly. (She is already thinking and planning real estate deals! Yikes.)

We had a very good meeting with Dr. Ronald Natale at the Outpatient Cancer Center at Cedars Sinai on Monday. He had been highly recommended to us by a number of folks as the outstanding Lung Cancer specialist in SO CAL. We wanted to get his opinion on her treatment. We were really impressed with him. He spent a lot of time with us and seems to really be on the front lines of treating Lung Cancers. Just as important, he is a nice guy and easy to talk to and is a good listener etc etc. We just feel right with him. So we have started his recommended treatment plan which is somewhat non- standard in design. He has treated many women who have the same disease profile as Claudette. That is, she has a rare type of non-small cell adeno carcinoma that is not smoking related that had spread and she had not had any other chemo treatments before meeting with him. Coincidentally this fit the profile of a class of patients he has had a lot of experience with.

She started taking a drug monday: Tarceva. Which is normally a second line chemo treatment but he has had great success using this immediately in cases like Claudette's as a first line treatment. She will take this for a month and then get re-scanned and we will see where we are. Additional chemo might be necessary or not. There are some side effects with this drug but losing hair or great fatigue are not one of them.

She will also get an intravenous infusion of a drug called Zometa, later today that will help rebuild the damaged C1 vertebrate that has caused all the pain and mobility problems with the neck. We need to get that stabilized asap so this will help do that along with Calcium/D etc.

Next up we will be talking to a few practitioners of more eastern thinking medicines acupuncture and dietary programs designed to help minimize the effects of the Chemo and all the drugs. She is very anxious to get with someone with that knowledge of healing to help her get thru this. We have several recommendations we are considering at this point.

We'd like to thank everyone who has sent along names and info for Doctors and Healers for us to research. There have been a lot, and while it is all a bit overwhelming to sift thru to find the one that are a good fit- we sincerely appreciate all the support.

At the moment she is having a little nap. We just had some lunch and she took her mid day meds. (her appetite has been good so far). We re-sorted all the flowers a little earlier- making new arrangements, to keep the flowers around as long as we can- they are all so beautiful! We had a walk around the block this morning, and took a brief drive to look at a couple of properties this afternoon.

All things considered we are doing really well and taking excellent care of each other.

A special thanks to all our local friends who have been bringing dinner by for us each night. It's such a treat to be loved so much.

So thank you all, and know that we will be in touch again soon.

Much love, and until next time we will remain,

the carters.