Time was ticking, monotonous, relentless and heavy.
A sledge hammer pendulum.
And as her soul departed, I was sucked in front
It's final swing pummeling me into oblivion.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
the hamster wheel
Still in the hospital...
We are approaching the 5 week mark. Judy's recovery from the successful bowel bypass surgery has been MUCH slower than anticipated. a little over a week ago she experienced some pretty serious complications that may extend our stay a bit.
I feel like I should write more but I'm tired and I think I'll just watch Jimmy Fallon and then go to sleep...
We are approaching the 5 week mark. Judy's recovery from the successful bowel bypass surgery has been MUCH slower than anticipated. a little over a week ago she experienced some pretty serious complications that may extend our stay a bit.
I feel like I should write more but I'm tired and I think I'll just watch Jimmy Fallon and then go to sleep...
Thursday, August 26, 2010
525,600 minutes...and then some
Wow...more than a year has passed since my last post. I think it goes without saying that a LOT has happened since last June. In the interest of time - yours and mine - I will try and summarize the past 14 months. , okay here we go:
The RFA treatment on Judy's liver was unsuccessful as was a subsequent attempt with a different method. They ended up removing the right lobe (half) of her liver. (it has since mostly grown back - a nice little trick the human body keeps up its sleeve). Then more radiation to deal with more cancer spreading. Then another 'Clean' scan with an asterisk. The asterisk, of course, turned out to be cancer. Surgery to remove it and her right kidney was unsuccessful - meaning, they didn't even try to remove it when they saw what it looked like. Chemotherapy was started. Just prior to that, a blockage was relieved with a stent. After the first 'round' of chemo (by round I mean about 12 weeks) they did a scan. The tumor was about 50% smaller. So round two commenced. About two thirds of the way through that, another blockage. Cleaned the first stent out and put in another one. Then a few days later, back to hospital to find out there was another block. This time in her large intestine. The blockage was due to scar tissue from radiation. Surgery was performed and she is still in the hospital recovering from that successful operation. We are hoping that she will be home in a few days. She's been in since Aug 8th.
Well, I think that is all of the 'major' things that have happened. After she recovers, we will probably do another scan to see where we are at and what further treatment options are available or necessary.
Peace,
Chris
The RFA treatment on Judy's liver was unsuccessful as was a subsequent attempt with a different method. They ended up removing the right lobe (half) of her liver. (it has since mostly grown back - a nice little trick the human body keeps up its sleeve). Then more radiation to deal with more cancer spreading. Then another 'Clean' scan with an asterisk. The asterisk, of course, turned out to be cancer. Surgery to remove it and her right kidney was unsuccessful - meaning, they didn't even try to remove it when they saw what it looked like. Chemotherapy was started. Just prior to that, a blockage was relieved with a stent. After the first 'round' of chemo (by round I mean about 12 weeks) they did a scan. The tumor was about 50% smaller. So round two commenced. About two thirds of the way through that, another blockage. Cleaned the first stent out and put in another one. Then a few days later, back to hospital to find out there was another block. This time in her large intestine. The blockage was due to scar tissue from radiation. Surgery was performed and she is still in the hospital recovering from that successful operation. We are hoping that she will be home in a few days. She's been in since Aug 8th.
Well, I think that is all of the 'major' things that have happened. After she recovers, we will probably do another scan to see where we are at and what further treatment options are available or necessary.
Peace,
Chris
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Where the heck have we been??
My sincere apologies! After my last 'cliff-hanger' post, I decided to send the next update by email. I THOUGHT that I knew of all who were following this blog but I think I may have missed a few. So - here is the email that I sent following Judy's PET/CT scan back in April. More has happened since then as I will detail after this:
Good Day!
I know that many of you are waiting anxiously for some news today. We are so happy….ecstatic….and elated to report that the large cancerous tumor that Judy has been treated for over the last 9 months, is dead. There is, however, a new, very small, spot on her liver. The doctors are VERY confident that they will be able to remove this spot without incident. This procedure will probably be sometime in the next week or two.
I will be sure to expand on this information and our/my feelings about it later, on my blog.
Thank you all for your support and prayers thus far. We wouldn’t be where we are without them. Keep them up!
God bless you all!
Chris
Well! I guess I wasn't so SURE about my need to expand my FEELINGS on this blog...I'll try, but first let's bring the story up to NOW:
After we got the results of the scan, we were so relieved and happy. But we did still have some work to do. The follow-up procedure for the 'spot' on her liver was scheduled for the following week. Let's talk about the 'spot'. Under normal conditions, the 'abnormality' or 'lesion' that they could see on her liver would need to be identified prior to treatment. Meaning, if one had no previous health condition(s), and just happened to have a scan done that showed this type of 'spot', the Dr.'s (and patient) would want to know what it was first and THEN decide what do to about it. Because of Judy's illness, it was every one's assumption that it was a cancerous tumor. She has cancer in the area, it is thought to be a metastatic cancer, blah blah blah. So, in the interest of avoiding ANOTHER procedure (a biopsy), we all decided to move forth and treat it as if it needed to be removed asap.
The way it would be treated was similar to how her original tumor was first attacked. Dr. Charlie would do what is called RFA, or Radio Frequency Ablation. Where the first time we used extreme cold, this time we would use heat and cook it. The tumor was in an area of the liver with plenty of good tissue around it. So a probe was inserted, the heat turned on, and the tumor, plus a good margin around it just be sure, was killed.
Afterwards, Judy was moved to a room for observation. The room was on the 12th floor where we had spent almost two full months. Many of the nurses who cared for Judy during January and February were able to come in and visit. They were all VERY excited to see her doing so well. Her Oncologist told her that it was a real morale boost for them. They just don't get to see this kind of turnaround very often. Most of their patients, sadly, don't ever get better.
A couple of weeks after this procedure, Judy went back in for a follow-up scan to see the results of the RFA procedure. The scan was clean but it did catch another problem that needed to be dealt with. Judy has some collateral issues relating to all of this treatment which I usually don't go into - it's all more than most want to know about I'm sure. You can imagine though, that after having seven probes inserted into your abdomen creating a large -120F ice ball in an attempt to kill a tumor almost 2L in volume, then giving birth to twins, then having six weeks of massive amounts of radiation with a dash of chemotherapy and a subsequent burning probe to a liver tumor, that you MIGHT have a few other issues in that general area, yes? Suffice to say, one of these other issues cropped up and Judy had to spend another few days in the hospital but all went as expected, which is all you can ask for most of the time.
Our next scan is set for the July 13th. We will meet with the Dr. on the 17th to review the results.
I have posted many new pictures on Facebook. Check them out!
Chris
Good Day!
I know that many of you are waiting anxiously for some news today. We are so happy….ecstatic….and elated to report that the large cancerous tumor that Judy has been treated for over the last 9 months, is dead. There is, however, a new, very small, spot on her liver. The doctors are VERY confident that they will be able to remove this spot without incident. This procedure will probably be sometime in the next week or two.
I will be sure to expand on this information and our/my feelings about it later, on my blog.
Thank you all for your support and prayers thus far. We wouldn’t be where we are without them. Keep them up!
God bless you all!
Chris
Well! I guess I wasn't so SURE about my need to expand my FEELINGS on this blog...I'll try, but first let's bring the story up to NOW:
After we got the results of the scan, we were so relieved and happy. But we did still have some work to do. The follow-up procedure for the 'spot' on her liver was scheduled for the following week. Let's talk about the 'spot'. Under normal conditions, the 'abnormality' or 'lesion' that they could see on her liver would need to be identified prior to treatment. Meaning, if one had no previous health condition(s), and just happened to have a scan done that showed this type of 'spot', the Dr.'s (and patient) would want to know what it was first and THEN decide what do to about it. Because of Judy's illness, it was every one's assumption that it was a cancerous tumor. She has cancer in the area, it is thought to be a metastatic cancer, blah blah blah. So, in the interest of avoiding ANOTHER procedure (a biopsy), we all decided to move forth and treat it as if it needed to be removed asap.
The way it would be treated was similar to how her original tumor was first attacked. Dr. Charlie would do what is called RFA, or Radio Frequency Ablation. Where the first time we used extreme cold, this time we would use heat and cook it. The tumor was in an area of the liver with plenty of good tissue around it. So a probe was inserted, the heat turned on, and the tumor, plus a good margin around it just be sure, was killed.
Afterwards, Judy was moved to a room for observation. The room was on the 12th floor where we had spent almost two full months. Many of the nurses who cared for Judy during January and February were able to come in and visit. They were all VERY excited to see her doing so well. Her Oncologist told her that it was a real morale boost for them. They just don't get to see this kind of turnaround very often. Most of their patients, sadly, don't ever get better.
A couple of weeks after this procedure, Judy went back in for a follow-up scan to see the results of the RFA procedure. The scan was clean but it did catch another problem that needed to be dealt with. Judy has some collateral issues relating to all of this treatment which I usually don't go into - it's all more than most want to know about I'm sure. You can imagine though, that after having seven probes inserted into your abdomen creating a large -120F ice ball in an attempt to kill a tumor almost 2L in volume, then giving birth to twins, then having six weeks of massive amounts of radiation with a dash of chemotherapy and a subsequent burning probe to a liver tumor, that you MIGHT have a few other issues in that general area, yes? Suffice to say, one of these other issues cropped up and Judy had to spend another few days in the hospital but all went as expected, which is all you can ask for most of the time.
Our next scan is set for the July 13th. We will meet with the Dr. on the 17th to review the results.
I have posted many new pictures on Facebook. Check them out!
Chris
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The time has come
Tomorrow is a big day. It is the first scan of Judy's tumor area since her radiation treatment ended. Originally we (our Dr.'s and us) had discussed doing this scan at 4-6 weeks from the end of radiation. We later decided to push it out to 8 weeks, just to make sure the radiation had time to finish it's job. The scan is a PET / CT, which means it's actually two scans. First they do the CT then they do PET scan. They overlay them in order to get the best possible look at what's going on.
Please. Pray for a decisively clean scan. We are looking for NO cancer activity.
We will not know the results of the scan until Friday. They results will be back sooner, but our appointment is not until then.
Please. Pray for a decisively clean scan. We are looking for NO cancer activity.
We will not know the results of the scan until Friday. They results will be back sooner, but our appointment is not until then.
Friday, March 20, 2009
And we're off! ...like a herd of turtles...
We've been home for two weeks now. Judy has been getting a little better every day. The progress is slow, but it's progress. She is still battling the nausea, but is able to eat well. She has started physical therapy and is moving more every day. It is a long road ahead still, but we're going down it - slowly but surely.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Home Sweet Home
A little know fact from the animal kingdom: Bad Gnus often follow good gnus around wherever they go, trying to get them in trouble.
The good news, of course, is that we are indeed finally home from the hospital. Yay! Apparently though, our journey is not yet destined to smooth out. Since returning home yesterday in the early afternoon, Judy has been very sick. Nausea. The kind that makes you not want to breathe, let alone move...or eat. So, we got that going for us, which isn't nice.
Hopefully, she's just feeling the continues effects of radiation treatment. If that is the case, then she should continue to feel better every day. Here's hoping!
The good news, of course, is that we are indeed finally home from the hospital. Yay! Apparently though, our journey is not yet destined to smooth out. Since returning home yesterday in the early afternoon, Judy has been very sick. Nausea. The kind that makes you not want to breathe, let alone move...or eat. So, we got that going for us, which isn't nice.
Hopefully, she's just feeling the continues effects of radiation treatment. If that is the case, then she should continue to feel better every day. Here's hoping!
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