It's finally Friday night | yosoyrosa's Blog

My friday night calendar was clear, the only thing I had planned was to putter around the house and go to the swedish pancake breakfast at the Vasa lodge on Saturday morning.  My dad volunteered to be one of the cooks at the griddle which is always entertaining to watch, and the food is good too.  My honey loves to eat and right now he's feeling pretty good, just grumbling over the stock market and motley fools on wall-street as usual.  This is hardly a cancer patient wasting away, indeed!  

The doctor had even mentioned the weight gain, there was only a brief period of swelling in the legs which we were told was normal water retention and given water pills.  No other history review had been remarkable, but I did remember something.  Following a hunch, I started diving into the big stack of medical test results that have been stacked in the binder put aside for "MEDICAL" in the office.  

It didn't take much to hit me, I needed history:

17 months ago was the first CT for abdominal pain during the Hep C treatment when nothing seemed to make him comfortable: "Liver is of normal size and free of focal defects."

13 months ago the results had "Liver is cirrhotic.  There is a suggested nodule in the left lobe measuring 3 x .2 x 2.3cm."  

Fast forward to now and the language changed: 

"Centrally within the right lobe there is a 3cm low density lesion which contains a new cystic or nectrotic area in the anterolateral aspect...There is a subtle lesion within the superior aspect of the lateral segment of the left lobe measuring 2.3 cm.  This is unchanged."

Lesion = wound and Necrotic = cell death     So when did the nodule turn into a lesion?  

I reviewed my notes from our visit on Wednesday again and the doctor did say he had concerns on how much of these tumors were 'viable cancer' for the TACE treatment.  Still I wonder, did we not push hard enough for a biopsy last year? What if we had?

I continued through the massive pile of blood test results and labs.  It was just about 2 years ago that a visit to the doctor started us on this journey, when our GP confirmed a lump (possible cancer) in my husband's breast tissue, and elevated liver enzymes.  She suggested we pursue a lumpectomy and biopsy of the breast tissue, and referred us to the local GI for Hepatitis C treatment.  

23 months later, I see the records of how miserable he was during treatment, he reacted to everything with no immune system or white blood cells left there's the Shingles information, the Staph infection info, and several hospital release forms.  Initially we were told treatment was doable he was otherwise healthy, only to find that his chances were less than 40% success due to duration of the disease prior to treatment and the genotype he carries.  It is comforting to hear that our chemo won't be as bad, and my prayers are that we survive this together, our fight is with cancer, not each other.   

I've just been informed the our attorney will be stopping by in the morning.  We have paperwork to notarize and to update our living trust.  The first treatment starts next week, and we'll be having company soon, it looks like I'll be doing more than just puttering after all.