tom's blog

Last call... and tomorrow morning should be the big move

Posted Wed, 10/15/2008 - 21:00 by tom

The words "last call" seem to make my mouth water. Must be a weird Pavlovian thing.

I don't know how that Jerry Lewis guy does it. I ask for donations 3 times in my life and feel bad about it. Tomorrow (Thurs) morning is the last day to raise funds for Kathleen's run this weekend. Here's the note she sent out to her regular supporters. So, once again... just give her a couple bucks if you can afford it. If you do donate, then your next drink is on me... which hopefully will be soon. What a great opportunity... donate to a good cause, get a tax deduction, and a free drink with me. Once she gets out of here and gets settled, I'll definitely be heading out one night to throw back a few cocktails. I'm overdue. Maybe something towards the end of next week. We'll see. This will be the last time I ask for donations for a while. I promise.

As of now, it looks like she'll make the move tomorrow (Thu) morning. This afternoon, the doctor actually gave her the option of going home late today or first thing tomorrow morning. She chose to go home tomorrow morning. She felt like it would have been too hectic to go home today. So she'll get one more night's sleep here and then get discharged in the morning. It worked out well, as she was able to see a bunch of the nurses before going home and I think that meant a lot to her.

She received some preliminary results from the bone marrow biopsy and they were good. When they did the bone marrow biopsy the first time (30 days ago when we started this), her bone marrow was "packed" which meant they couldn't extract fluids. The packed condition was caused by an abundance of Leukemia within the bone marrow. Now, it is no longer packed, which is the way that bone marrow should be and they were able to extract fluid. So, that part is good. We still need the actual results, but there is definitely an improvement there.

Her energy level and spirits have been great the last day or so. She's been doing laps and back to her normal chit-chatty self. Right now, her biggest discomfort is where they did the biopsy, which is a dramatic improvement over where we were last week. Emotionally, physically and in every other way, I think she's ready to get out of here... lets hope the transition out of here is smooth. Next week will be hectic as she'll need to do outpatient type stuff every day (Mon-Fri). So, we'll have a bit of back and forth to the hospital. After that the schedule slows down a little bit, but we'll still have chemo and other outpatient appointments for the next two years (or so).

I hope that I get to write tomorrow's update from some place other than the hospital.

more energy, bald head, test is done, and a call to action....

Posted Tue, 10/14/2008 - 21:44 by tom

She wound up waking up late night around 2am and doing a few laps around the unit. While it would probably be better if she slept through the night, the fact that she had enough energy to walk around is fantastic! She's really bouncing back, feeling good and has a lot of energy. This time around, the energy is not steroid related... it's all pretty much natural. Her home run totals will drop by a bit, but all around, it'll be a better game. She's down to a pretty low dosage of pain meds, so overall there are fewer and fewer meds interacting within her system.

Early this morning, she decided it was finally time to shave the rest of her hair off. The clippers had been over here for a few days now, but she wasn't feeling up to it... so this morning, around 6:30am she had one of the nurses shave her head. Probably not what's supposed to be happening in the Oncology unit at 6;30am, but when you are feeling up for stuff - it's best to just go for it. I think it looks great on her. The peach fuzz look wasn't really working, so this is a big improvement. With her face, she can actually pull it off. I think she looks more beautiful than ever!

Though there are only about 4 people that will understand this next comment, the rest of you can probably use your imagination --- it's definitely not like the time when we shaved Lips on the front porch on Cliff Street. And then he had to go back to work. Oh my.

Back to the important stuff.... she had the bone marrow biopsy today. They completely knocked her out for the test, so she just remembers getting the anesthesia and then waking up. Her back is a bit sore, but definitely manageable. We should have some preliminary results in the next couple days. This is an important one, so for those of you that pray, please go ahead and pray on that one. For those of you that don't, then do whatever it is you do....

Going home tomorrow is still a possibility, but wasn't explicitly discussed. I'm not sure if it'll be tomorrow, but definitely feels like it's soon.

And finally, a call to action.... as mentioned previously, our good friend Kathleen will be running in a half marathon this Saturday in honor of Anna's fight with Leukemia. For those of you still employed in this wacky economy, today is probably payday... if you can, please do donate (http://www.reddy2run.com) as it does all go to fight blood cancers and it is tax deductible. Also, while you are doing stuff... regardless of who you are going to vote for, please register to vote. Depending on where you live, your time to register is likely running out. And, please don't post political stuff here. Baseball, religion, or just about anything else is welcome here, but lets not digress into politics.

Also, i wanted to thank all the people that have explicitly asked how I'm doing lately and sent hugs/kisses for me (though some of you needed a little prodding... you know who you are!) Seriously, this is all about Anna and no one should ever forget about that... but I do appreciate the love/support/hugs/etc from everyone.

As TJ says, nighty-nighty.

Test tomorrow, home shortly there after..... (we hope)

Posted Mon, 10/13/2008 - 20:03 by tom

Today was another day of good progress. I can tell from looking at her that she is feeling better. They started to transition her off of the IV pain meds and onto the pill pain meds, which is just another good sign that she'll be out of here soon. The results from that ultrasound the other day was fine. No problems there. She has a pretty big test coming up tomorrow, which is the bone marrow biopsy. Its a pretty straight forward test, but the results are meaningful. Basically, right now the cancer appears to be under control via the blood tests... but you never truly know until you test the bone marrow. If the results are good, it means we continue with the long-haul chemo treatment over the next couple years. If the bone marrow biopsy still shows the cancer is not in remission, then we may need to consider more aggressive treatment plans.

We're tentatively targeting Wednesday as the day to get out of here. That depends on everything continuing to go well. Also, we've decided that she's going to stay at her parent's house for a little while. With her parent's work schedules and availability of family, we think that will give her the best possible support in the near-term. I'll probably stay there sometimes as well when I need to be in the city or maybe on weekends. We'll see how it goes. Right now, it's just one day at a time. Once she gets settled in, we'll hopefully start talking about having visitors. I know there are quite a few people that have been wanting to see her and she does appreciate all the support.

As a side note, I thought I would avoid baseball, but I actually find myself getting sucked into the playoffs. Overall, I'm rooting for Tampa as I think it's a great story... but if that can't happen, I'd love to see Manny (and Joe) go into Fenway and spank the Sox. I might even rock the dreads for Halloween if that happened. Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, TJ is going to be Donald Duck this year.