Author: sortlane1

It has been two weeks since our last update and that has been a blessing since it has been a fairly boring two weeks.  We like boring….  No unexpected hospital visits, surgery, etc.

Today is a normal chemo day and we are now on dose 3 of 4 for the first phase of treatment.  We will finish up this phase on July 15th and then start the phase 2 regiment on August 5th.  Phase 2 is a different drug sequence that will be given every week for 3 months.

The “normal” chemo challenges such as nausea and generally feeling crummy has not been a big problem for Val.  What has really been a pain has been the side effect of anxiety.

Val gets a steroid as part of the chemo to help keep her system running and make the drugs more effective.  Unfortunately it has had a nasty side effect which keeps her “motor running” and she has not been sleeping and generally feeling anxious.  At times it is bad enough to almost be debilitating.  This side effect has been especially hard since she has dealt with this challenge in the past and is more easily triggered by her treatment.

We have been blessed by the verse 2 Timothy 1:7… “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

Would you join us in praying 2 Timothy 1:7 over Val?  We are really wanting this side effect to go away.

We did receive some good news today. We have not mentioned this to very many people, but through all of Val’s testing the doctors found something questionable with her thyroid. A biopsy showed atypical cells, which made our medical folks wonder about an additional cancer in her thyroid, and the samples were sent out for a second opinion. We finally got the results today and…….NO THYROID CANCER!!

Thank you so much for your love and support for our family!

Marc

 

 

Today Val was able to successfully start chemo again after her stay in the hospital a week ago.  The new drain that was added from her surgery last week was also able to be pulled this morning. 

With all that behind us she was able to restart chemo today to get back on her every other week schedule for the next couple of months. 

Could you be in prayer for the following:

1) That Val does well responding to this latest treatment. 

2) That we don’t experience any new set backs. 

3) That she has a good week next week, feeling good, etc. 

Thank you for your waking with us!

Marc

Boy has it been a long week!  Thank you so much again for your prayers and words of encouragement as we battled this week. 

Late yesterday Val had surgery to remove the infected expander. That surgery went well and last night she recovered nicely. 

This morning we were uncertain if she would be discharged as there are four different docs who all needed to agree she was ready to go. Early this afternoon we were given word that all was good for discharge and she would be going home on an oral antibiotic. 

Then it took about another two hours to get all the paperwork together. Once that was all done we had an anticlimactic walk together off the floor and to the car. 

Val has a follow up appointment with her plastic surgeon on Wednesday and then hopefully she can restart chemo next Friday. 

We are grateful that she is home!

Marc

Val’s culture came back from the fluid around the expander showing infection. For the medical folks specifically “gram negative rods”.  This particular infection is a little bugger and very difficult to get cleaned off the expander. 

With that news, we made the decision with her docs to pull the expander. It will be permanently removed and we will restart the reconstruction process after the chemo treatments are all completed. 

Val and I are doing good with the decision and have peace having some specific next steps. We are definitely learning to look at the path forward but only take one step at a time, leaning hard on our Lord. 

The kids are doing good with having Mom gone but we are all ready for her to be home.  It may be possible we get discharged tomorrow!

We had the kids up last night for several hours, getting some finals studying done along with some bill paying. It was good being together just doing normal stuff. 

So we are on now night #5 of hanging out at Spectrum. Val continues to be an “interesting case”.  Back in 2003 when we had our last medical experience with Val and it dragged on, one of her doctors said she was an interesting case and that you don’t want a doc to use that description of you. 

Well she continues to be am interesting case with this cancer. Her fever is down and has stayed down since Sunday. On Sunday afternoon we noticed the skin around one of her expanders was warm and red. This pursisted and got worse. 

They did an ultrasound and found some fluid on the expander. It took yesterday to get the medical team all up to speed and a consensus of what to do next. 

So this morning they went in and put a new drain at that site and got some jiffy looking fluid. That fluid now is being tested to see if it grows anything. At this point we are expecting it to grow something. 

Tonight her main doc gave us the challenging news that she is not going to be going home anytime soon. They need to come up with a treatment plan and this also will delay the next chemo treatment that was supposed to be this Friday. 

To put it mildly, we are both discouraged. We are not sure what or how to pray. Thank you for praying for us when we don’t know how. 

Marc

Val had her first chemo treatment a week ago last Friday and had a pretty good week until this Friday. 

Late on Friday afternoon she spiked a quick fever that got fairly high. In addition, the lab work she had done earlier that morning showed her white blood cell count was way low. 

As a precaution, she was hospitalized on Friday evening. They have taken various cultures and are working to see if she grows anything interesting. The cultures take up to 48 hours to grow, so we have been hanging out at Spectrum this weekend.  

Her fever has been up and down so I am glad they are not taking any chances. She has kept her sense of humor though because as we were getting checked in last night she says to me “we had been talking about having a weekend away”…… Not my idea of a romantic weekend 😄

Val successfully started chemo treatment on Friday and it  went very well.  Because we had a delay in getting the chemo cycle started, the schedule of oncology nurses got a little messed up.  This is the main nurse who will administer chemo and help keep track of us through this process.

Arriving on Friday morning we got a chance to learn the whole process of how a chemo treatment goes.  First there is the labs to check blood counts, then we get moved over to the “infusion room” where we get a chance to get comfy and settled.  Each chemo treatment takes about 4 hours from start to finish.

We get settled in on Friday and our oncology nurse comes up and introduces herself as Tara.  Since this is the first time we met, the first question was if she would be the nurse who was going to be with us through the entire 5 month process.  She answered yes which then started a whole new line of questions….

Whenever I am a little nervous I can get “chatty”, which sometimes gets on Val’s nerves 🙂  Anyway, I go into full blown chatty mode and start peppering her with one question after another.  Tara (and Val) handled me pretty good :).

As we talked I recognized her last name but couldn’t place from where.  We started talking about mutual people or places we may know but were unsuccessful in nailing the connection to her last name.

Tara left for a little while as Val’s first drug started to run and I started to look through my contact list for that last name.  It took me about 3 seconds, and I figured out we had an engineering intern working for us by that name a few years back.

As she comes up to check on us I casually ask, “is your husband’s name David”?  She pauses with a stunned look on her face and answers yes!  That started a whole new line of conversation and she did awesome with us!

As I sat there on Friday, I texted my boss (who is visiting Disney with his grand kids) that I had a cool “small world” story to share with him when he gets back.  In an even more ironic twist, he texts back, “Funny.  I’m in line at the Small World ride right now”!!

The biggest thing about all this is that Val is very comfortable with Tara and is very happy she will be following us and be part of the team.  As a husband, that is such a reassurance.  As we drove home, Val looks over at me and says “maybe that is why we were delayed in getting started”.  Pretty cool to see how the Lord orders our steps!

Over the last few days Val had been feeling pretty good.  She has had enough strength to go out and buy planters for the porch and get ice cream to celebrate Memorial day.  She has had a few bouts of icky stomach and being tired, but overall she has handled the last three days really well.

We now get into a groove of labs every Friday to check blood counts and then a chemo treatment every other Friday for this first phase.

Once again, it is hard to express the gratitude for all the prayers, love and support being shown us.  It is great to see the body of Christ working so well.  We have been blessed with meals, cards and notes of encouragement at just the right time.  Kinda of like starting this chemo journey at “just the right time”.

Marc

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you familiar with the last update where we walked through “Holding at T minus 50 seconds”, as of today the countdown to chemo has resumed!  The drains were removed this morning!  (Ah Houston, looks like the starboard and port extraction tubes are all clear, you are ready to resume the countdown to launch.)

So….now Val has a few days to heal up (she still has holes in her sides 🙂 ) and if nothing too “exciting” develops and the drain sites heal we should be good to go for chemo this coming Friday morning.

It has been tough being in a holding pattern, especially knowing that what comes next isn’t necessarily going to be very fun.  (It’s not like waiting for Christmas day that’s for sure!) But we are ready to go and get on to the next steps in the healing process.

Besides wondering how Val will feel on the chemo, we are preparing ourselves for her hair to come out.  Overall our kids have been doing great, my guess is that when Mom’s hair starts to leave that will be a deeper challenge.  I know that will be tough for me.

Thank you again for all your prayers!  We continue to be amazed at the support received and the ways the Lord has been providing.  We covet your prayers for our family.

Ok so I (Marc) grew up during the heady years of the Space Shuttle program and remember watching the launches as they count down from like 10 minutes to launch.  Each system doing a go/no-go check.  Ok so I am little bit of a geek. 🙂

Anyway, we have gone through a bunch of go/no-go checks on all systems and the only system that continues to report “not ready” for chemo are those darn drains.  (Ah, Houston, we are going to suspend launch while we check output on the starboard and port extrication tubes).  We have experienced another “hold status” and not going to be able to start chemo this week like we had hoped.

Holding is tough when you want to get on the journey, even a difficult one.  There is value in the holding though.  God held his people Israel for 40 years before they could enter the Promised Land.  He used that time to mold them and teach them He was the one and only God of the universe.  That He could be depended upon and that they needed to rely on only Him.  I can not begin to imagine how hard it was for them to wait for 40 years.  Our prayer is that the Lord uses this holding in our lives for His glory as well.

Thank you again for your many notes of encouragement, phone calls and visits.  We are extremely grateful that we are not alone in this “hold status”.

Marc