Welcome to Vivi's Blog!

Hi Everyone,

As most of you know by now, Vivi was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer two weeks ago. The cancer was found completely by chance during a routine CT scan on her lungs. It was then that the radiologist spotted some suspicious fluid in her stomach, and after many tests, it was confirmed that there was, in fact, a malignancy.

This past Tuesday, Vivi received a minimally invasive procedure at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, where she is being treated, called a laparoscopy. During the surgery, the surgeon used a camera to assess how everything looks from the inside. The goal was to confirm the origin of the cancer, assess the extent of the spreading, and determine the best course of action for treatment. Bottom line, there were no surprises. As previously predicted, from what they saw, they feel chemotherapy is the best first step. She will most likely start the treatment next week, and after 5-6 rounds (about 6 months), she will most likely need to have a larger surgery to remove whatever cancerous tissue the chemotherapy was not able to treat. From there, she will receieve another round of chemotherapy, and will hopefully be cancer free in about 8 months!!

Vivi was an absolute trooper during the procedure, and as usual, offered plenty of entertainment for the hospital's staff. Since there was a possibility that there would be a larger operation involved, each nurse that came in to prep her for surgery asked if she understood what procedure she might be getting (they don't want to remove someone's organs without the patient fully confirming they understand this may be a possibility). After being asked the same question about 5 times, in Vivi fashion, she decided to have a little fun with the situation and started to tell the nurses she was there to have a baby. She also later told me that she was very vocally admiring the rear-end of the nurse who rolled her into the operating room. I have no doubt that this unyielding sense of humor and mischevious spirit is what will get my mother through this process with the usual Vivi flair!

While no operation is fun, Vivi is healing extremely well. After a few days of hanging low at home - watching her soaps and chatting on the phone - she is already up and about, and heading out for brunch as we speak.

While we have a long and tough road ahead, we are all feeling extremely positive that between the wonderful doctors at Sloan Kettering, her lifestyle changes, and Vivi's undeniably strong spirit, she is going to get through this with flying colors!

Thanks to my father, Aaron, Kelly, and an incredible woman named Stefenie Sacks (http://stefaniesacks.com/hamptons/welcome-culinary-nutritionist-new-york.htm), my mother will be receiving the best in alternative healing along with her conventional treatment. This will include a very specific diet, doing plenty of exercise (a miracle, I know!), receiving acupuncture, and many other supplemental treatments.

Of course, we would not be able to stay as strong and positive without all the love and support from all of you. It has truly been overwhelming and incredible. In fact, there are so many people concerned with Vivi, that managing her fan club has literally become a full time job! Hence, the reason for the blog. We fully appreciate that everyone would like to stay as up to date as possible on Vivi's progress, and felt this was the best way to do so. While you will likely be hearing from me the most (sorry), this will be a forum for the rest of the family to also share their thoughts and updates. If you are lucky, you may even hear from Vivi, who, I assure you, will have the most entertaining posts of all of us!

With that said, we would also love to hear from all of you. As you will see, there will be an opportunity to make comments and share your thoughts after each post, and we please encourage you to do so. As I mentioned before, there is just no way we would get through any of this without all of you!

So...what's in store for this week?

Monday and Tuesday, Vivi will be meeting with two potential personal trainers who are going to whip her into the best shape of her life. I am voting for the man we are meeting with on Monday as his cute South African accent sold me off the bat:) In any case, positive changes are under way!

Wednesday, we have our first meeting with Vivi's medical oncologist, and should have a better idea of what her treatment plan will be on the conventional side. Once we have more of those answers, we will obviously keep you all up to date.

In the mean time, I hope you will all be doing exactly what we plan to be doing this weekend - enjoying the beautiful weather!

Until next time...