Well we held off a week on Gators 4^th chemo. He got sick with a bad cough the week before so they did a ct scan of his lungs at American Lake in Lakewood on Wednesday to check for pneumonia. They scanned from his nose down to his pelvic area because since he lost his voice they’ve been carefully watching to make sure the cancer doesn’t spread to his throat, well in the scan they found 4 spots on the base of his brain! They tried to tell us it may be nothing but we were horrified anyway. Dr. Grim called us at home to say that it would be 2 weeks before they could get him in for an MRI and boy did I raise a stink! I started calling around to see if there was any way we could get him seen at a regular hospital and get some financial aide to pay for it. I gave the oncologist the phone number of someone at Centralia hospital who said they could get the MRI done in 3 days. That was Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon Dr. Grim called back to say he had been on the phone for hours discussing Gator’s case and that he arranged for the MRI to be done just before Gators Chemo.

Monday morning at the Seattle VA Gator had the MRI done and then had his chemo. He slept through the chemo because he had taken a Lorazipan to calm him down before the MRI (he hates them!) and the Lorazipan mixed with the benedril that they give him with the chemo just knocked him out!

We got back to our motel room and had to wait until the next day to find out whether or not the spots on the brain were cancer. I called home that night to check our messages and the radiology oncology department had left a message wanting to schedule an appointment with Gator for the next day. Gator wasn’t supposed to get any more radiation so we new the cancer had spread. What a way to find out! We new the cancer was in his brain but couldn’t find out how much or if we had any options until the next day. What a long miserable night. Lucky for Gator the medicine was still in his system so he was pretty calm and just went to sleep. I took one of Gators oxycodones and after a long cry was able to finally go to sleep.

The next day we met with Dr. Grim and the radiologist oncologist and they said Gator could get something called “Gamma Knife surgery” done at Harbor View. Eventually he may need to get whole brain radiation but this Gamma Knife will work as long as there is no more than 5 or 6 lesions on the brain. He can get this treatment over and over again….