Not the news I was expecting

Oh my!...this is going to be a hard one to write. I had hoped our recent medical trip to M.D. Anderson Center was going to be good for us and end in positive news…after all I felt relatively good. Instead we got hit hard with news that was worse than I had ever imagined. The worst I had expected to hear was that the tumors had only gotten slightly smaller or stayed the same…not gotten larger. My parents, Denise and I arrived at M.D. Anderson on Sunday, July 25th and I prepared for a day of tests and scans. I was not scheduled to see the Oncologist till 2:30 the following day, and prepared for a long night of wondering and fighting off those “creeping thoughts.” Monday, drug on and finally 2:30 arrived. We waited in the waiting room for the next two hours, getting more anxious by the minute. 2 ½ hours after our original appointment time, we were escorted back to an examining room, and another hour after that, the physician’s assistant met with us. Rather than hearing “I’ve got good news!” from the physician’s assistant, she immediately wanted to listen to my lungs, asking if I was having any shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. Humm? I asked if she was going to be the one to tell us the results of the CT Scans. No more delays, the physician’s assistant informed us that yesterday, the radiologist called them after reading my x-rays and scans, which is unusual. “You have a couple of blood clots in your right lung!” Apparently that is serious and they injected me with blood thinners right away, to ward off the formation of additional clots. That wasn’t all…”The chemo has not been as effective as we had hoped, and the tumors have grown slightly.” At that point I was about ready to walk out of the examining room, I just could not take anymore bad news, but I had to hear the full story. It seems that I have a couple of blood clots in the right lung, there are two tumors in my liver instead of the original one, and the original one has grown. There are additional lymph nodes in my chest and abdomen that are showing up as cancer, and one of them has increased in size to 2.6 cm from the 1.8 cm on the last scan, three months ago. I mentioned, to the physician’s assistant, that I had been feeling pain on the left side of my back radiating to my chest, and that my stomach and bowels have really been acidy, making me ill. They were unable to find any cause for the stomach and bowel problems, but that the pain in my back was most likely do to irritation from a suspicious growth on my T4 vertebrae. They were recommending that I have a bone scan when I returned home, and that I may want to opt for radiation treatment. When we finally met with the Oncologist, he confirmed everything the physician’s assistant had told us and went over a revised course of treatment that they were recommending. The chemo I had been receiving was their most aggressive treatment, but since that was not working, they were going to “mix up the cocktail.” I recalled during the first visit the Oncologist saying that if the original recommended treatment did not work, anything they would recommend after that would be less effective, and did not even bother asking about a prognosis. That night was one of the longest nights of my life. When I did fall a sleep, I would wake 15-30 minutes later. Thankfully Denise let me sleep with the television on.

I wrack my brain trying to think of reasons the treatment isn’t effective. After all, I try to stay active by gardening and taking walks, trying to eat right and let the chemo work, and of course constant prayer. I just don’t know why, and may be I’m not supposed to know why. I do know this…I am reminded that each day we are given is a gift and to try and live life to the fullest. Denise and my parents are worried that I am just going to give up. I have never been a quitter and as long as I have something to hold on to, no matter how small, I am going to give it my best. God bless all of you for your constant prayers and support, and I’ll end this entry by asking you refer to my “Making a mess of the sand!” post from May 20th.