2-10-09

We got to the appointment at the East clinic 20 minutes late this morning. Not a good way to start the day. It was snowing too! Just what we need…..NOT! The East clinic (The Same Day Unit) is where he will have the surgery done on his throat. First they checked Gators weight and vitals then sent him to get blood drawn and the pic line flushed and re-bandaged. The pic line was plugged up so they couldn’t draw blood so they had to inject something into it to clean it out and we had to wait for an hour before it would take effect. We had lunch while we waited the hour then went back up to the IV clinic and it worked. They drew the blood and sent us to the waiting room to wait to be seen by the Medical doctor to talk about Gators medical history for the pre-op evaluation.

When the evaluation was over we headed over to registration to fill out the means test. This is something the VA has him do every year to keep track of all the big money Gator makes throughout the year….Then we finally got to go to the oncology appointment with Dr. Grim to find out the results of the MRI & CT scan.

First of all the MRI showed no new spots. The old spots are still visible but the radiation oncologist said they would be. They said after the Gamma knife surgery the lesions would be like scar tissue, dead cells that would still show up on the MRI. The only way to tell if it worked will be if they don’t grow. That’s messed up! But no new spots is fantastic news! The CT scan showed that the cancer in the lungs shrunk a little bit more but not enough to continue on with the Chemo. Dr. Grim said normally they only do 4 Chemo treatments in the 21 day sessions and that Gator got 6 so he got more than the average guy. The spots were shrinking less each time he did the chemo. So rather than continue on for such a small response and risk damaging a major organ, they would give Gator a break from the chemo and let him build up strength. Then he’ll start back up with a different kind of chemo next time around.

We go back in 30 days to have an x-ray because Gator aspirated some liquid into his lung and they want to make sure it doesn’t turn into pneumonia. He was drinking some Gatorade right after the screwed up procedure they did on his throat 10 days ago and because of the swelling and the fact that the left vocal chord is laying over the liquid backwashed into his lung a little bit. They put him on antibiotics to fight possible infection. We can’t let anything get in the way of the surgery next Tuesday….

Gator will come back in to see Dr. Grim on 3-10 to get the results from the x-ray and to just kind of check up on him. Then in May he should get another CT scan to check on his lungs. We won’t know when they plan on the next MRI until we hear from Dr. Rockhill (the guy who did the Gamma Knife surgery) this week sometime. So anyway, Gator will keep the pic line in his arm until after the surgery on Tuesday then out it comes! He’s really looking forward to that!

(2-10-09 cont..)

One final bit of awesome news we got today is that the spot on Gators liver is NOT Cancer! Wow! That was so good to hear…..I’ve been really worried about what they planned on doing with that. Such a relief….We also asked about Gator getting his hair back before he has to start up the next chemo session. Dr. Grim said the average person usually has to start up the chemo again after about 3 months but Gator hasn’t been going with the norm since all this started. He also said he probably wouldn’t get his hair back before the next session of chemo begins but to keep our fingers crossed because it could happen.