Change in plans

Our goal the past few months was to get Shaun strong and healthy enough to endure a potentially life saving surgery. The same surgery he had last May, but with a different chemotherapy agent to try to eradicate all the cancer cells. We've had several set backs due to a bowel obstruction but we always held onto hope that the surgery could still happen. Well, the day before surgery, Shaun went in to the hospital for pre-op stuff when presented with a potential complication. The surgeon ordered a colonoscopy to see whats going on and found regrowth at the original site of Shaun's tumor. It is unclear if the tumor is growing from the outside and creeping into the colon or started again on the inside, but it is causing some bleeding. Based on this and a recent MRI results suggesting a large tumor load in Shaun's abdomen, the surgeon doubted the big life saving surgery would be possible. More likely, he could fix the bowel and leave Shaun with an ostomy bag and wouldn't bother taking out the tumors since it wouldn't cure him. Plus by having surgery, he could actually hurt his chances of going on chemotherapy and shrinking/stabilizing the disease. So with few other options, we chose to go back to chemotherapy. There is a phase II clinical trial opening at the UIC for colon cancer patients but it won't be available for at least a month or two. After discussing it with the oncologists at UIC, they recommended going back on the very first regimen of drugs he was on back in October of 2009. He responded really well to these drugs and didn't have any tumor growth while on them. But, they caused neuropathy in his hands and feet. This was the main reason another course of treatment was chosen last fall that ultimately did not work. So in a week or two, Shaun will go back on FOLFOX with Avastin. We are hoping to tweak it in order to minimize discomfort and inconveniences (pill instead of a pump, lower doses etc.). Shaun has been feeling great lately and even helped Dale paint our kitchen (three times). We want to keep him feeling this good as long as possible. His energy levels keep going up every day and we hope some nice weather will allow us to resume our family weekend outings. Any suggestions on where we should go?