Continued...

For some reason, I felt like I needed to break up the lengthy posts.

I left of with Dr. Weeks. He makes rounds late. Like 9 - 10pm late. But amazingly enough, the same day we asked for the recommendation, he showed up at my dad's door around 9:30pm. I was not there, but this sweet man called me after his visit with my dad. He was able to give me a little more information about what Dr. Matthews found in surgery.

1. The tumor was about 4 inches across and 3 inches lengthwise.

2. This type of cancer is very responsive to chemotherapy.

3. Radiation will be inevitable.

4. Surgery will come after treatment.

5. He will have a colostomy bag at some point that may or may not be permanent.

6. Dr. Weeks has a plan.

I like the plan part. When you have a plan, you make progress. The plan for now was to spend the whole day doing additional testing to see if the cancer had spread. He was scheduled for a bone scan, CT scan, MRI, doplar venus something or other, and a full blood work up. The best part was that Dr. Weeks told me that if I made sure to be at the hospital on Wednesday between 8-9pm he would meet with me there and go over the results to all of these tests. He even gave me his personal cell phone number. WOW.

So, Wednesday my dad got poked and tested a lot. I felt bad for him. He was kinda crabby. Dr. Weeks did just as he promised and arrived just before 9pm to meet with me. He even took me to a room with a computer screen and showed me all of my dad's scans. So the results of the tests were:

Bone Scan: Normal
CT Scan of Chest and Abdomen: Normal
MRI of whole body: Lymph nodes enlarged on either side of his groin

Translation: The cancer had spread to lymph nodes, but not to any organs.

It is a positive thing that the cancer has not spread to organs, however; Dr. Weeks wanted to jump to chemo quickly because the cancer was in his lymphatic system. So, he rolled out his treatment plan.

His chemotherapy is Cisplatin 5 FU. That literally means nothing to me. I just hear "chemo."

He will have chemo for 5 days straight, then off for two weeks (blood tests and scans during this time). Chemo again for 5 days straight. Next, he will enter phase 2 of treatment which is 4 - 6 weeks of radiation (everyday, Monday - Friday) with chemo woven in. After radiation, surgery to remove the remainder of the tumor and a colostomy bag (may or may not be permanent), to allow the affected are to heal. In other words: long road ahead of my dad.

My dad accepted this news well.

Thursday came with the possibility of his port-a-cath being put in. However, that did not happen for one reason or another. Friday they came and got my dad around lunchtime and took him down for a PET scan (another cancer detecting thing) and then straight to have his port put in. The nurses even called my cell while I was at work throughout this procedure. I got to the hospital after school right after they brought my dad up from the procedure. He had a nice little incision on his right side near his shoulder. He was also ZONKED out. I talked with his nurse and she said that he was in pain after the procedure so he was given some pain medication that knocked him out. I decided to slip out and I headed home and CRASHED on the couch.

I was at the point of exhaustion. I was working full days, going straight to the hospital to wait to see doctors. I don't think I made it home before 8pm all of last week. My eyes burned. I had to get my contacts out. I fell asleep HARD on the couch. I woke up to a call from Dr. Weeks at about 8pm. He said that the PET scan showed something going on with my dad's thyroid, but we could address that later. One thing at a time I guess!

I decided to give my dad a call. WOW. HE WAS LOONEY. He was pressing buttons in my ear on the phone and claiming he was trying to open the gate to let me in. He also said that the nurses kept coming in his room and yelling at him to open the gate. Finally, I called his nurse and she said he was very out of it. She suggested I come up there. So, a very tired Katie and her sweet husband were on their way to the hospital at 9pm on Friday night.

We got there and he was still looney. He had seemed to forget about the "gate." However, now he was obsessing of temperature. For instance, he said that the right side of his body was 312 degrees. Ha! He also at one point was looking at the TV and asked me if Chris was on TV arresting someone. He thought his bedside table was a "dashboard" of some sort and wanted me to read numbers off of it. He did answer questions correctly like the current year, his birth date, etc. My dad has always been good at math. So, I decided to ask him a math question. I've been teaching my kids fractions, so I threw one of those questions at him. I said, "What's 2/3 of 15?" His response: "312." He was obsessed with that number. He finally began to settle down, and we headed home and were in bed by midnight.

So here I am at Saturday. His head was semi-clear this morning. He has been agitated all day. However, they did move him to the cancer floor today and I LOVE IT. The care is so much better! As I saw him tonight, the nurse noticed that he wasn't able to empty his bladder. She did a test and discovered that his bladder was holding over a LITER of urine. So she called the doctor and he of course ordered an internal catheter. He immediately felt some relief. So, now there is another issue with his bladder, but for some reason, I left the hospital tonight with more the most comforting feeling. There is another problem, but these nurses are going to take care of it.

Tonight was also a big night. They hung the first bag of Cisplatin 5 FU. Chemo has started. The cancer is real. I pray that his body responds well. I hope it kicks the crap out of that tumor. :)

That being said, I'm going to sleep...and I feel like it's going to be the first good nights sleep I've had since January 26th.

Love to you all!
Katie