Friday, January 31st we once again, travel down to UC Davis where they perform a needle biopsy of the hard lump in Scott's abdomen. The preliminary slides come back....positive for myeloma. They then take him in for a full body PET scan with contrast. This will show any unusual areas in his body, basically masses or tumors by coloring them with dye. We will have the results on Tuesday February 4th.
Four days have never gone by sooooo sloooowwwwww.
Finally, Tuesday, February 4th arrives. I pick Scott up. We position his two pillows just right in the car seat. We get him as comfortable as possible. He times his pain medication. He brings his backup medication so he has it to take at the stroke of the third hour. His body knows exactly when three hours is up. He braces himself for the miserable, painful car ride from Lincoln to Sacramento. I watch his face. He's pale. He has perspiration on his upper lip. I tell him I'll pull over anytime he needs so he can get out and walk around if he needs to and then we'll get back on the road. He says, no just keep driving. But through all of this, he never gets cross or irritated. He never, ever once complains. He never says, why? Why me? He never gets angry. He smiles, he makes jokes.
One morning he got out of bed and he didn't quite get his feet under him and his left leg gave way and he fell. He got a rug burn on one knee. He laughed at how funny it was that he was on the ground and couldn't get up. He had to crawl to the bed to hoist himself back up. We laughed at how we always make fun of a certain commercial for a product called "Life Alert" where someone does fall down and can't get up and the slogan at the end of the advertisement says, in a very halting voice, 'Every Senior Citizen Should Have Life Alert'. He is 15 years from being a senior citizen. But we laugh anyway. It feels good to laugh. Really good. We love to laugh and try to laugh a lot.
We say a prayer together in the car that we will be prepared for whatever lies ahead. We hold hands and feel the spirit rest upon us as I offer the prayer and pray that the doctors will be inspired to know what treatment will be best and that we will feel calm and peaceful, that we will feel confident in the treatment plan and that we will know that our lives are in the Lord's hands and that we are willing to submit to His will in all things. We feel good. We are just happy to finally have answers and know we will leave the doctor's office today with a plan. Something tangible to focus on.
Our oldest son, Chad, comes with us. It is soo comforting for me to have family there. Both of our younger children are on missions. My parents are on a mission. Our other son is married and lives in Utah. All of our immediate family live in other parts of the United States except Chad. It brings me comfort to have him there with me.
The doctor comes in and says the PET scan shows what he suspected. There are multiple tumors throughout Scott's body. Even though Scott's bloodwork shows he's in remission, he is in the rare 5% of myeloma patients who have active cancer that doesn't show up in his lab work. He says his cancer is now more aggressive than it was even in July (when he had another major episode and was in the hospital for two weeks with severe complications). He says it has now mutated and that is why the tumors are outside the bone marrow just underneath the skin. It is growing out of control.
The tumor in his hip that was the size of an orange two weeks ago is now the size of a football.
Treatment must be begun immediately. Normally to do radiation and chemotherapy, they will do radiation for 3-4 weeks then start chemotherapy. Chemo has to be started within days, but radiation HAS to be done to start shrinking the football/tumor. So they only have a three-day window for radiation. So the doctor sends us down to radiation immediately after we leave the appointment. They confer with us, place tattoo dots in Scott's body to mark the exact spot where the radiation will be targeted. They schedule him the next 3 days for radiation treatment directly to the tumor at a higher dose radiation than normal. This is to ease his pain and shrink the tumor as fast as possible to alleviate all the problems it is causing. The tumor has already caused a fracture in his hip. More damage will ensue if it keeps growing.
As for chemotherapy, he will be admitted to the hospital Saturday for four days of a regimen of 4 different chemotherapy drugs. This will be part of a two-week regimen. He will then be re-evaluated to see how successful the treatment is. If it is working, he will receive another cycle. After a few cycles, he will immediately receive a donor (allogenic) transplant. He is no longer a candidate for the transplant with his own cells. His cancer is too aggressive for that. So, the 4.7 million cells that were collected will not be used. They are no longer needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment