Randy Pausch Update

Here is the weekly update on Randy Pausch. We send you and your family love Randy. So many people visit this site and leave comments for Randy and his family. I would like to thank all the people who leave comments and stories about their lives and challenges. Randy Pausch gives courage and hope to people all over the world as he puts a different face on life’s hardships, encouraging everyone to live life to the fullest. Our heart are with you Randy.

June 26th, 2008: Slow, but continued recovery

I continue to slowly recover. Chemotherapy has a cumulative effect, so it takes longer to recover the deeper one gets into this. Our current thinking is that more chemotherapy may not be wise; at this point, almost all potential chemotherapies may potentially make me so weak/sick that even if they were to slow the tumor, it would not be clear it would be the right tradeoff. We are currently narrowing down some immunuotherapy-based apporaches that would presumably come with little or no side effects. More news as that proceeds.

Today’s box score:

Creatanine (kidney function): 2.2

CA19-9 (tumor marker): 1400

Blood Pressure: 120 / 70

Weight: 142

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The Amazing Last Lecture of Randy Pausch

Dr. Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Last September (2007) he gave his last lecture. This is a tradition among College Professors - giving your last lecture as though you were dying.The rub is, Dr Randy Pausch, is in all likelihood dying. He is battling pancreatic cancer. Diagnosed with the cancer on August 15, 2007 and given 3-6 months to live, today he is still going. Here is what he wrote on his own blog on February 15, 2008:

Feb 15: Six months later …. and still alive & healthy Today is a pretty important day. It was August 15th, 2007, when I was told I likely had “three to six months of good health left.”Today is six months from that day. Just to prove I’m still alive, here I am, holding today’s New York Times! I rode my bike today; the cumulative effects of the chemotherapy are hurting my stamina some, but I bet I can still run a quarter mile faster than most Americans.The doctors weren’t wrong; they always said that if the palliative chemo worked, I’d buy more time, but that it was a long shot. And the doctors have done a brilliant job of tweaking my regimen to help my odds. How much longer this will work is hard to know, but I’m going to keep having fun every day I have left, no matter how many or how few of them I get.

This is Randy on Oprah giving an abridged version of his “last lecture”. This is what we mean when we say courage.Read Randy’s blog here

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