Week 44 to 49
Week 44 to 49
Once again, I apologize for the delay in posting, this has been a very crazy few weeks. To start we finished round one of the new Chemotherapy, as mentioned before a slight increase in nausea but beyond that I was able to toleration the medicine well. After two weeks of Chemotherapy, we followed up with a two week break from Chemo medication, it was a nice break, but the nausea continued to increase making me sick on nearly a daily basis. On the third week we started up the chemo again, we continue testing on the Left Foot drop in including doing a Spinal tap to see if we could pinpoint what was causing it, in the end it is thought that this is a side effect to the immunotherapy that have been taking.
Week 47 we begin takin our oral Chemo treatment again, nausea still very bad an worsening day by day the pain level was starting to increase as well 4 days into the new chemo cycle I begin getting violently ill with pain the was boarding off the charts. This resulted in a late-night visit to the Emergency Room (the girls are true troopers, helping me get ready get out the door an being in the ER with me), needless to say it was boarder line Thanksgiving and none of us wanted to be there.
Once in the emergency room after a Ct scan, we were able to determine the Tumor had grown significantly and was cutting of the pathway to the small intestine, this required a surgy to place a stent in to help keep the pathway open. The girls came to visit me on Thanksgiving, which was a treat, at this time were just doing pain management and damage to control. Surgery happened that Saturday the surgery although difficult was completed without any problems. After the surgery we spend time working on figuring out my medications to better keep me comfortable, they have now moved me to Fentanyl patches to better manage the pain and a faster actin dissolving nausea medication. In total we spent 12 days in the Hospital just getting home last weekend, since then I have been resting, but the new regiment has been working nicely I have had 3 good days now which has been more than I have had in long time.
Part of the problem here is, it is clear the 3rd tier of chemo treatment is NOT working thus were now moving to our final phase of Clinical trials. We had a meeting this week with one of the Doctors on the main campus to talk about the next step(s), she will be searching the database every two weeks looking for a clinical trial that I am a good fit for and are a good fit for me, this is an involved process, but she is searching all Clinical trials throughout the US. In the meantime they are going to put me on a very aggressive Chemotherapy to bridge the gap the concern here is that any break now in Chemo treatments will result in the tumor getting out of control very fast such that we can’t do anything more about it, we are going to give it 2 months to see where we’re are at before making any major decisions but our time according to the doctors is running thin.
On other concerns the side effect causing the left foot drop have now moved to the right foot as such we are having trouble walking with both feet dragging and tripping me up. I will see the Neurology team in the next few days, to talk more about this, there is great concern this could affect my mobility dramatically if we don’t watch it and figure out how to help it.
So, a couple of blows now the Right foot has the same symptoms as the left, there are no current clinical studies we can get involved with and we are takin on one of the last most aggressive chemotherapies out there. It has been an emotional an exhausting few weeks, we will again give it 2 months to try I am still fighting my mind is willing but my body is failing.
Cheers Love you all Brian
