Friday, April 08, 2005
Sabrina Update
So often, whether I'm out at clubs (like last night at Gator Jakes) or email or phone calls people are asking for updates on my wife's fight with cancer. She sends out an occasional update and gave me the O.K. to post her latest:
Aloha! It’s been about 3 months since I wrote an update, and there have been quite a few changes, so here goes.
In the 3rd week of December, I had a CaT Scan that showed my active Hodgkin’s Disease tumours to be stable—no progression, but no regression either. Exactly 2 months later, at the end of February, my CaT Scan showed marked growth, with a very large tumour in the pelvic area, another on my spine, which was causing me a great deal of pain, and what appears to be cancer in my bones. Very bad news. The pain was on the far tip of my right ribcage, and started off as an occasional discomfort when I woke up, progressing within weeks to a SCREAMING ouchy all day long. At my clinic check up a few weeks back, they decided first to manage the pain. (I was in favor of that!) I was taking codeine, but that was no longer curbing the agony, so I moved up the pain meds ladder to the bigtime! Morphine. I’m not real excited about taking morphine on a regular basis, but hurting all the time is a lousy choice, too.
My Karmanos doctors, and Stephanie Mellon-Reppen, my awesome nurse-practioner, who follows me EVERY visit, sent me back to Dr. Decker, my fabulous Beaumont oncologist, to talk about chemotherapy and radiation. Dr. Decker consulted with Dr. Voravit, my main (and scary smart) oncologist at Karmanos, and together they decided that radiation, followed by chemo was the way to go. They sent me to Dr. Forman, who is now my radiation oncologist, and he got me set up to be measured and tattood (so they can always find the EXACT spot where the radiation is to be pointed) and start radiation within two days. Unfortunately, the tats are just little blue dots. Nothing fun like "Mother" or "These Colors Don’t Run". Black and I were going to Florida the following week, and Dr. Forman thought getting a few treatments before the trip would help with the pain management. And he was right! That’s why they get paid so much, I'm pretty sure. I felt great the whole time we were down there at Kamp Kallen Kondo and we had an awesome vacation, which surely helped with my mood.
We resumed the radiation treatments this week, and the always entertaining Dr. Forman thinks I’ll be getting another 1-2 week’s worth. That’s going every day, Mon-Fri. When that’s done, I’ll be starting a chemotherapy regimen, a "baby" chemo. Probably something called Gemzar, which is fairly new. They can’t really blast me with heavy duty drugs, because of the condition of my heart, and that’s the same reason they won’t give me a cocktail of mixed chemos. My heart is functioning at about 30%, which is a lousy percentage, but still better than the 20% I was working with last year, so I’ll take the extra 10%, thankyouverymuch.
As always, we SOOOOO appreciate the cards, the prayers, the good vibes and the well wishes we receive from everyone. The support from all of you makes it possible for me to keep fighting, and some days it is really hard. But there’s really no choice in the matter, because I want to live, as long as I can have a decent quality of life.
Thanks for the love.
Peace & Love,
Sabrina
¶ 5:19 PM
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