Prayers Are Working (As If We Didn't Already Know That!)

In case you’re wondering, the on-call doctor never came by Saturday night. Good thing I have that street-smart medical degree, eh? After Mike still appeared not to be improving Saturday evening, I insisted the nurse call the on-call doctor to see if his steroids needed to be increased some more. After the nurse talked with the doctor, Mike was given five more milligrams on the spot then his regular dose was increased to 20mg. When the on-call doctor did come by on Sunday for rounds, I shared my concerns that Mike has not been following textbook protocol as far as how quickly he can decline. The doctor ordered a drug called Mannitol, another agent to help with the swelling. He also ordered a CT scan and MRI to check for hemorrhaging. They don’t do MRI’s on Sundays, so that’s why he was having the CT Scan—they do do those on the weekends in the emergency room. Mike continued to give some crazy answers to questions throughout the day, but he got better as the day progressed.

This morning I talked with our regular oncologist. He is going to keep Mike on the high steroids dose until the radiation treatment is finished next month. Based on the CT scan results, Mike is NOT going to have an MRI today. The scan is compared to the last one he had here on January 9. The bleeding Mike was having in the biopsy area in January has “nearly completely resolved” and there is “no new intratumoral hemorrhage.” That is great news because Mike did have additional bleeding while we were at Duke, so there evidently is no sign of the hemorrhaging Mike was having earlier this month. (If you remember, on February 5, I was told the tumor had grown, Mike was hemorrhaging and there was nothing else the doctors could do…it would just be a matter of days.) Our doctor is going to send the report to Duke to see what they think about starting the Avastin. Also on the great news front…Mike’s February 11 MRI showed Mike’s tumor had a diameter of 5.6 centimeters. Yesterday’s scan showed the diameter at 5 centimeters. I’m no rocket scientist, but that tells me the tumor has shrunk six millimeters since Mike began radiation and chemotherapy nearly two weeks ago! Keep the prayers a goin’...5 centimeters is still bigger than the tumor was when Mike first went to the hospital in January, so we’ve still got a long way to go. I am, though, extremely encouraged by how well this current treatment is working.