When it Rains

This has been one of those days I can't believe really happened.  As you may know, we had a meeting with Jay's doctor at the Huntsman hospital to go over his test results at noon. But to give you the full story we need to back up a few hours to last night about 10:00 pm.  Jay finished up an MRI of his spine and we were on our way home when he started getting abdominal cramps.   We wondered if he had maybe had a reaction to the tracer injected for the MRI.  He was able to sleep a little bit last night but by the time we got to his doctor appointment he was in a lot of pain.

We were anxious to hear the test results but even more anxious to determine the source of this out of he blue abdominal pain.  Dr. T examined him briefly and had a confused look on his face. He didn't think it was related to the cancer and we would need to do....you guessed it... more tests.  In the mean time, we wanted to hear about the main event of the day, the actual diagnosis.  Unfortunately the news was not as good as we hoped.  The PET scan had revealed additional tumors in his rib (where he had been having pain) and surprisingly in his right femur.  There were also a few more suspect areas on his spine that the MRI from last night would reveal.  The "multiple" tumors along with the blood tests and bone marrow biopsy confirmed the diagnosis.  We are dealing with MM.  The news was not all bad. His kidneys are functioning well and his blood levels are pretty normal.  This puts him in Stage I and you can't hope for better than that.  I'll put out more information on the treatment plan and prognosis a little later but for now on to more urgent matters - what was causing that abdominal pain?

Dr.T decided to admit him to the hospital to figure things out.  The next few hours were a whirlwind of activity.  He was started on morphine in the infusion room where the bone marrow transplants are done.  It was a little eerie to see patients in various stages of recovery and realize we would probably be back for the same thing in a few months.  They suspected the abdomen pain was being caused by his pancreas and then moved him to an inpatient room.  After seeing about every medical professional in the building (except the massage therapists, where are they when you need them?) we finally discovered the source of the abdominal cramps....gall stones.   The gall of those stones showing up on a day like today!  It was actually a relief to know the pain was not in any way related to the cancer. But it is something that will need to be resolved, possibly surgery, before the chemo treatments can be started.  We also learned somewhere along the line there are three additional tumors in his spine.  

What a day it was!  It rained and it poured and I could really use a cute puppy picture about now.

Step-by-step we'll get there.

Lynn