StumpTown Blog

I like being liked and so do you. Oh admit it, you do too. You know you do. Thankfully there are still a few people out there that like me. It is not a particularly large group of people, but my Mom says that is just because they are all jealous. That could be true I guess. After all I am not handsome or charming or fun at parties, but I am related to people who are all of those things and that surely counts for something. Regardless of all that though, out of the modest group of people that like me, there is a new challenger to the title of my number 1 fan. That position is currently held by the regional sales manager for Pepsi Cola. I have no idea why. Our good friends Tony and Jennifer have a little girl named Claire. She is about the cutest little girl you have ever seen no matter how many girls you've seen. Whenever she sees me she runs up to me and jumps up to be held and burries her head in my shoulder and holds on. She only knows a few words but says "Josh" very w...

Good afternoon everyone. I have more news about my Dad and I am afraid it is not very good. The Gleevec that my Dad has been taking has failed. As you know, my Dad’s GIST returned to his liver and the hope was that an increased dose of Gleevec would knock it back. It did not. The tumors continue to grow at a startling pace. The next step is to switch to a different drug called Sutent. The hope is that Sutent would reduce the tumors where Gleevec could not and get them small enough that my Dad could have more surgery. We could know whether that is going to work in as little as a week. If the tumors continue to grow or fail to shrink, there are still some options, but they are less clear. As far as we know now, at that point surgery would not be an option. There may be a radioactive drug that could be used directly on the tumor. There may also be clinical trials for different drugs that my Dad could join which would likely require traveling to a place like Boston or North Carol...

My Dad wanted to send his own thanks and update to our congregation here and asked that I also share this letter with those reading my blog since so many of you have been praying for him. So, below is that letter. Reading it was very comforting and inspiring for me. Dear Family… As you can imagine it has been an interesting week in the Stump household. I was more than a little bummed to get the news last week that I had gone from the always hoped for NED (No Evidence of Disease) on my August scan to multiple new tumors just four weeks later! And one of these is already over 2 inches long!!! These crummy things move faster than several cars I’ve owned over the years. It is not as if I don’t know what I’m up against with this cancer. I was told from the beginning that GIST is an aggressive cancer and that my particular version of it is especially aggressive; and that while there are treatments that might stabilize its progression there is no cure. I know all this, yet…for the past month ...

A quick rant: Happiness should never be a zero sum game. A “zero sum game” is an exercise where adding something means taking something else away so the sum of the exercise is always zero. It is a political/economic/game theory where one participant’s gain will result in another participant’s loss so that the aggregate gain and loss amounts to zero. Sadly, this concept seems to regularly apply to our relationships and it is something I think we should guard ourselves against. All of that may sound like nonsense, but I guarantee you have experienced this. Ever known someone who can not stomach someone else’s happiness or success because it makes them feel less happy and successful? Some people act like there is a fixed amount of happiness in the universe so they resent people who find it because it means less for them. This is, of course, not only wrong but destructive. There is nothing like greeting happiness with resentment to reduce the value of your friend’s happiness to zero...

Just a quick update… As many of you know, my Dad was able to see his Oncologist today. He confirmed that there were new tumors (or at least newly visible tumors) on the liver. There are 6-7 at least. Two of them have grown rather large rather quickly. My Dad doubled the dose of his medication with the hope that it will shrink these tumors. If that does not work, there is another drug he can take and we will again look into the procedure he had done in May that fried the last large liver tumor. He will have another CT on Friday with a follow up appointment next Wednesday. If the tumors are shrinking he will likely just keep the Gleevac at a high dose and monitor. That is the best case scenario. If the tumors are still growing, we will likely switch the drug and consult with the surgeon about the tumor blasting. So, there are still a variety of promising options. For now we are praising God that my Dad is actually feeling good again which we hope is a sign that the higher dose o...

Hello out there in blog land. I am sad to have to report today that we got some bad news regarding my father this week. If you read this blog or know my family, then you know that my Dad has been battling a rare form of aggressive cancer for several years. The first surgery removed a football sized tumor from his abdomen. In a matter of months the cancer returned, this time primarily in his liver. More surgery this past May killed the tumor in his liver. In early August of this year he had a CT which showed no new tumors or growth. The surgery was a success, he had finally recovered and then got a clean bill of health. It was a good month in that regard. Unfortunately, he began feeling discomfort in his liver a couple weeks ago. He went in for a CT this past Friday and then discovered this week what we had feared, but had not allowed ourselves to believe. The cancer had returned and was again in the form of tumors in the liver. In a month’s time one of the two new tumors was ...