November 9, 2011

• Tom Update

  Tom really enjoyed having a couple of months off of chemo in September and October. We really enjoyed all the family events- birthdays, Range Fest, anniversary and loved our visit with Sam in Mississippi in September. Tom has been keeping all of his speaking and teaching appointments. We can't measure the value of all that 'normality'. Tom painted our bathroom, and we got some other 'honey-do's' accomplished while he was feeling good.

  We knew that we would have to reckon again with the cancer in November. Tom had an appointment last week for a scan, then yesterday he had a visit with his doctor at Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis (West County).

  To refresh my mind and others, Tom's colon cancer cells have been working on a couple of places in his body. He has a few tiny spots in his lungs, and he has some that are near his kidney. Those by his kidney are in too crucial an area for surgery, being adjacent to his aorta, which is the main blood vessel that delivers blood to vital organs and his legs. His numbers have been going progressively up, even with chemo. I try not to think about the numbers too much. The doctor is reassuring in that respect. She tells Tom all the time that "she doesn't treat numbers". What cancer he has in his body is not affecting any vital function, and in the case of the spots in his lung- not big enough to remove surgically.

  His past chemo has included oxiplatin. That chemical caused neuropathy in his extremities (hands, feet), so he has had it off and on for the last couple of years. When it affected him too much, the doctor would ease back off of it. 

  Yesterday, Tom and the doctor decided to start up the every other week treatments again, this time with a different mix of chemo. Instead of the oxiplatin in conjunction with fluorouracil, this has Camptosar (irinotecan). The side effects don't promise to be very glamorous. There is a greater chance that he will lose his hair with this and to put it politely, one of the side effects may have him needing to take immodium. Not something that would be convenient for a public speaker. But one day in, he still has his hair, and he said that he is feeling pretty good, but tired. 

  We had an adventure last night with his chemo pump. This is a little device that is small enough to be carried in a fanny pack, along with a bag of chemo drugs which intermittently delivers the liquid chemo through a line into Tom, via his subcutaneous port.

  The pump began to malfunction as soon as he got into his car after his appointment, sounding a little alarm to indicate things were not right with the device. He thought maybe it was a fluke, so he went ahead and left the clinic. Since it was still sounding the alarm every so often, he decided to stop at the visiting nurse place in Alton, to see if they had another pump there. That is the place that the nurse who disconnects Tom  at our house comes from, but they didn't have what he needed. The nurse's name is Dawn and she disconnects Tom from the pump. He gets chemo usually on Tuesdays and she disconnects him on Thursdays. They were able to contact the company which supplies the pumps, and they were to send another by courier.

  He came on home then from Alton, and after awhile we got a call from the courier who said she was stuck in traffic in St. Louis and would get there as soon as she could. It took awhile, but she got there. I was amazed she found our house- it's not easy to find at all, especially at night.

  Tom called up Dawn and then it turned into what felt like a scene from a movie. Tom was holding the phone to his ear with one hand talking to Dawn, and was opening and pushing buttons on the pumps with the other, while I helped and was nervous. It felt like one of those scenes where people are working to disarm a bomb, getting the instructions over the phone to first cut the blue wire, then the red, all the while you see the digital countdown. It wasn't at all THAT dramatic, but I sure didn't want to be responsible for being the one who goofed and us having to whoosh ourselves to the hospital to get things working properly.

  But it turned out to be fairly simple. We didn't have to disconnect the chemo line or anything- that was a relief!

  So that's where we are now.

  

  We so appreciate prayers. Appreciate is too small of a word to express how we feel about those. We are very happy that God has spared Tom so far, and that our life has some degree of predictability to it, going with the ebb and flow of the chemo treatments.  We have a LOT to be thankful for, and give God the glory for the grace he has given us.

  • 11:41 am
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