Save Jace

So I’m sitting here at the hospital on Saturday night wondering what the heck has been going on this past month and a half.  Wondering where life went wrong and when it is going to change. Jace is sleeping as peaceful as he can with tubes of chemo being sent into his blood.

We got here Friday morning.  The MRI was scheduled for 10AM and as hospitals go, they were running late.  They got started around 11.  But he went through great and came out as groggy as usual.  We immediately got put in a room since they were expecting us.  I should log the rooms we have been in now.  Even though its already exceeded 7, I dont remember most of them…but this one is 423.

They gave him his first dose of chemo sometime in the afternoon and then started the 12 hour drip at 6PM.  He was playing as usual and getting into everything he possibly could.  Some things just dont change.  Friday evening he got sick once, as was to be expected but I was not fully prepared for.  I think the reality of it all just kind of sank in when he got sick on the first night.

Staying on this floor is much different from the others.  When we have been here in the past, we would usually go to sleep around 10 and that would be it for the rest of the evening.  Here, the cancer floor, they come in pretty often all through the night, checking vitals and flushing his IV to make sure the chemo is still going directly into his veins.  Apparently if the chemo goes somewhere else, not in the veins, then it can burn the skin and cause complications.  So we get minimal sleep here.

This morning they brought breakfast and he ate it down.  But he got sick again.  Of course typical Jace, and anyone who knows him…he wanted more food.  To now, those are the only times he got sick.

I met with the Dr sometime around noon.  He just informed me more about the side effects of chemo and the normalcy of some of the things that go on on this floor.  From now on, I am to wear gloves whenever changing his diaper or wiping his nose.  The chemo is excreted through bodily fluids.  Soon, even if he cries, his tears could be orange from the red chemo.  That will scare me.

When the Dr was getting ready to leave from our visit I remembered to ask him about the results of the MRI.  If EVER there was a deer in the headlights look, I just received it.  I knew there was bad news.  JUST by the look on his face.  Almost like he was dreading me asking and was trying his best to answer my questions and get out of there before i could.  But I did.

And what he told me, of course devastated me.  And what I saw is something I never could have imagined.  There is a new tumor.  New growth in a completely different spot.  Below the original baseball sized tumor and almost the same size.  This one is 3 inches in diameter and located below and behind the original tumor.  1/3 the width of his tiny brain. 

The Gliadel Wafers that the Surgeon put in the first resection are obviously working because when you start looking at the MRI pictures. The first resection is on the top right frontal lobe and its a good picture. Clean resection with the little black dots that are the wafers and nothing in the contrast that was not to be expected. Some scar tissue where the first and second tumors were removed. But then when you go a little deeper in the MRI, BAM. Another 3 inch diameter tumor staring back at us as big and as scary as the first one. I asked the Dr what that meant and he said the same thing we have been hearing since day one…how aggressive and how scary this cancer really is. That every day is a gift and every month is another miracle. 2 WEEKS!!!! 2 WEEKS!!!! And this thing grew 3 inches that quickly. He described this cancer like mushrooms.

“One night your there in your house and you see its raining, and the next morning you get up to see your back yard covered in mushrooms.”

What we do now.  Finish this first treatment and see if the chemotherapy can slow this massive thing down any.  Hopefully, it can shrink it as it is now pressing on the center of his brain.  After we finish this treatment we will see what the results are and go from here.  Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully we finally get some kind of good news. The MRI they did yesterday was only of the brain, so we are unsure of spreading anywhere else.  The fact that this tumor grew 3 inches in 2 weeks and completely separate from the original is scary.  But we are hopeful that it has again only remained there in the brain.

We pray again.  We see where this road is taking us and we follow it, faithfully and committed to beating it.

God Bless us all!
Jamie

Trackback URI | Comments RSS