The Stage IV Life

March 22, 2022

Time for an update – sorry it’s been a minute. Things have been quite chaotic around here.

Brian has completed his second week of alternative treatments.

On Wednesday, we met with the doctor and were able to take a live look at Brian’s blood. We had done this on day ONE of his treatment as well. The biggest, best change to his blood was the fact that there was a ton of dead cancer cells in there. There wasn’t a single one on Day 1. So that was very exciting. Overall, he’s been feeling pretty good. Always quite tired, but good.

He received low dose chemo on Tuesday and Thursday, so that was a little harder.

Friday morning he woke up not feeling quite right, and by the afternoon, was in a lot of abdominal pain. He is already on a regimen of pain killers for the tumor pain, but they weren’t touching the pain that was increasing at a great rate. That night I kept getting up every 3 hours to give him more pain meds, but they weren’t touching the pain. Fast forward to Saturday (yesterday) and he was in bad shape. This of course came as a shock because things seemed to be going so well. I spoke with Dr. Bob (our alternative doctor) and he suspected a bowel obstruction – so we were off to the ER. The back of my car was the ambulance – Brian could not even sit up – the pain was too great. Longest ride to the hospital ever. We only had to wait an hour and 40 minutes to get a room in the ER. And thankfully, they seemed to be fast tracking everything …. which we were so thankful for. (The cancer card does come in handy!) All of our dear prayer warriors were lifting us up in prayer through this ordeal – and I suddenly had a peace that I hadn’t had for the last 24 hours…… I had honestly felt pure horror and panic inside. Now I felt peace. What the heck?

They gave him an effective pain med, so he was able to breathe and rest more easily which was a great relief for me as well.

Next, they ran a portable chest X-ray and then took him for a CT scan. The last CT scan was on February 12 – the day he was admitted to the hospital last time. Then we of course had to wait for the results. Hospitals and waiting….. bleh.

Results came back and the doctor reported that he saw a partial bowel obstruction on the CT scan, chest X-ray all clear (yay!).

Up next the surgeon came in to see him, discussed the scan and that he actually didn’t see the need to rush him in for an emergency repair. Also, the tumor is not the cause of the obstruction. Good news! Instead they game him a different oral contrast, and then ran a series of X-rays every 15 minutes to see the contrast going through his small intestine (we are still waiting on the results from that).

The highlight of the whole day was when another ER doctor was kind enough to read the CT scan results to us. The tumor that was discovered on Feb 12th has not changed in size! This is what we needed to hear! The alternative treatments ARE WORKING! The tumor on his PET scan January 4th was 1.5 cm. On February 12th (less than 6 weeks later) was 8.7 cm….. 4 weeks later, on March 12th – NO GROWTH. Thank you Jesus!

Brian was able to sleep with the good pain meds on board and now we are waiting for the surgeon to see him and go over the game plan. We are of course expecting them to keep him in the hospital at least a couple more days – hoping they don’t.

Oh by the way….. we found it very amusing that he was admitted on Feb 12th last month, March 12th this month and we ended up in the exact same room as last month. Hey, at least I know my way around here…..we would however like to stop this habit 😉

Tomorrow is Dylan’s 20th birthday and we would certainly love to be at home, celebrating him. But if that can’t happen, we will have a delayed celebration once we are all back together again.

We can’t thank you enough for all of the prayers, love and support. This is a long road, but you are helping us carry on – and that means the world to us.

God is good, ALL the time….. and He just keeps proving His faithfulness.

xoxo,
Jen