Hell on Wheels

I know you probably think the blog title refers to my driving style and you would be right when we hit Nashville last night.  This is going to be a lengthy entry so I'm just warning you in advance.

Yesterday at 7:30am, we were at the Mallinkrodt Radiology Unit at Barnes Jewish Hospital checking Denny in to get his porta-cath for chemotherapy.  Just in case you are not familiar, the port is inserted under the skin with a tube running into an artery just above the heart.  This allows health care personnel to take blood and administer the chemo without having to stick an IV into Denny's arm every time.  There is a 2 inch incision that is on his chest and is held together with stitches and glue. 

After the port was put in, we ate some lunch.  He started chemo immediately afterward at 12noon.  The chemo took about 5 hours from start to finish.  They gave him a hefty dose of Benadryl to decrease the chance of any allergic reaction.  Basically, he slept through the whole treatment yesterday. 

While he was sleeping, our world did a 360.  The ENT's office called my cell phone and said that the treatment plan was changed.  The doctors continued to wrestle with his case even after we thought we had a plan.  Denny is basically in uncharted territory and everything is an experiment.  His doctors are so good; they continue to manage the fluidity by continually monitoring for a better way.  Dr. Haughey (pronounced Hoe-Eee) has decided against debulking the tumor.  He felt that it would be putting Denny through an unnecessary procedure that wouldn't guarantee him any results or buy him more time.  The Chemo doctor, Dr. Adkins, said he needed the tumor to stay in tact so that he could monitor the change; meaning shrinkage.  If Dr. Haughey went in and took part of it, Dr. Adkins would not know if the chemo was shrinking the tumor or not.  So, basically, we have moved to Option 2: Chemo for the rest of Denny's life.

When Denny finished the chemo at around 4:15, the nurse noticed a bit of blood seeping from the port area.  She put some steri-strips on the wound and told us to call the oncology doctor on-call if there was any change.  We left Barnes Jewish and headed home around 4:30pm.

Leaving St. Louis and heading home was a challenge.  In Illinois, we hit a 3 mile backup of traffic as road construction narrowed the confluence of 2 major highways at Mt. Vernon. We got through that, stopped off to eat and then continued on towards Paducah. By this time it was dark and had started to rain steadily. We stopped at Paducah to get gas and off we went; anxious to get home.

About 50 miles from Nashville, Denny decided to pull up his shirt to look at the port site.  When he did, all we saw was a blood soaked bandage.  I was horrified because while Sleeping Beauty rested during his chemo treatment, I was reading the care instructions, "You should not see any blood.". We didn't know if an artery had been nicked or if it was the incision bleeding.  After contacting the on-call doc, we were told to go straight to the ER. 

I was "Hell on Wheels" getting us into Nashville; fighting road construction, traffic and rain.)  We got to the Vanderbilt ER around 11:30pm.  Keep in mind - it was a rainy, Friday night close to midnight.  Vanderbilt's ER was a mess.  They got Denny in and re-dressed the incision.  Then...we waited. They took an xray and saw some fluid in his lung; not enough to be alarmed.  They said it would be reabsorbed.  A new dressing was reapplied and we were sent home.  We got home at 4:15am.  By that time, I had been up almost 24 hours. 

Home never looked so good.  We felt like we had lived a lifetime in just one day.  If we can do that, we can do anything! 

Today, if you could see us, you would never know anything out of the ordinary has occurred.  I had some errands to run at the bank and grocery store.  Denny and Dan are out working on his truck.  The chickens and guineas are pecking for bugs in the yard.  Toby is rolling around in the afghans on the couch.  Supper is cooking on the stove.  We are living an ordinary day in an extraordinary way.  Cancer will find Denny a tough opponent to conquer!