The Unpredictability of Cancer

We have had an eventful few days since my last blog. They have involved a trip to the ER, a couple minor surgical procedures, and a night in the hospital. Thankfully, I am home now and feeling well. I think the drama is behind us, but one of the things about cancer is that you never know what it is going to throw at you tomorrow.

Early Saturday morning (4 am) I woke up coughing up blood. I was half asleep, so I vaguely remember coughing up a blood clot, then several minutes of blood before the bleeding stopped. I went back to sleep, and had no more bleeding or much coughing the rest of the day. Sunday morning the same thing happened at 8 am, so I thought I would call my doctor, but I didn't want to bother him on a Sunday morning, particularly because it stopped and I felt great. It was the best I had felt in a couple weeks, and I took Ethan for a 1 mile walk that morning. At about noon it started again, so I texted my doctor and he immediately called me and instructed me to head to the ER.

I spent the rest of Sunday in the ER, getting chest x-rays and a CT scan to look for a pulmonary embolism, and they checked my blood to see if my platelets had dropped too low. Everything looked fine, so they figured that one of the nodes in my lungs was probably bleeding, and the Lovenox was interfering with clotting. Basically they wanted my blood to clot, but not too much. They don't want a clot associated with my port, but if something else is bleeding, they want it to clot. So they took me off the Lovenox and told me to go home and check with my oncologist on Monday.

We spent Monday at home awaiting directions from Dr. Winegarden's office. They decided to keep me off the Lovenox and to send me for a doppler (ultrasound) of my port on Tuesday to look for a clot. That went smoothly and there was no clot found, so they decided to take my port out, which would allow them to take me off the Lovenox and allow my body to clot naturally. The surgery to remove my port was scheduled for Thursday morning.

Tuesday night I woke up at 11:30 pm coughing up blood, and this time it seemed like more than the previous times. We spoke to the on-call oncologist at 11:45 and he said there wasn't much more the ER could do than run the same tests as they did on Sunday, and to call back if it didn't slow down within an hour. It did slow down over the next hour but didn't fully stop for nearly 2 hours. In the morning Dr. Winegarden called me and asked me to come in for a bronchoscope.

At noon on Wednesday they scoped my trachea and lungs under general anesthesia to find the source of the bleeding. What they found was an area in my trachea, just above where it splits into the two bronchi, that was badly irritated, bleeding, and had a few lumps in the tracheal lining. The surgeon biopsied the lumps, and then cryogenically froze the areas that were bleeding. They admitted me overnight for observation, and thankfully I have had no bleeding since the surgery. The surgeon did warn us that this procedure may need to be repeated before the bleeding is permanently stopped.

This morning, before they discharged me, I had my port removed. That was surprisingly easy. They did it under local anesthesia. I was awake and carrying on a conversation with the surgeon about boating the whole time, and did not feel a thing. He was an amazing surgeon. I can't believe that something that has been embedded in my arm for over a year, with a line running to my heart, could be removed while I was awake and I did not feel a thing!

I got home around 2 in the afternoon today, Thursday, and slept the rest of the day. I needed to catch up on the sleep I didn't get in the hospital. I have spent a lot of time in hospitals over the last year and it is hard to get much sleep at night until you have been there a few days and are just too tired to be kept awake by the interruptions.

It was good to be home this evening and read Ethan his bedtime stories. He is actually starting to brush his teeth before bed by himself already. I guess that makes me the proud, dentist father. I had really hoped that the next blog entry would be more photos of Ethan from Halloween, but instead of downloading them on Sunday for the blog, the cancer threw a wrench in our plans for the week. Switching to oral chemo was supposed to afford us more routine in our lives, but I guess that is yet to come.

I hope all of you are doing well. Thank you for checking in on us and for your many thoughts and prayers. Living with cancer means living with the twists and turns and the uncertainty. We never really know what tomorrow will bring, but we rejoice in the gift that is each day. We focus on tackling the challenges and embracing the joys that comes with each of those gifts.

Livestrong, and may God bless you!