Sucky News Week

So the last year has been crazy annoying.  Starting in October I got what looked like a cold but lasted thru New Years.  And then came on and off for months.  It was a fever with productive cough and no one could figure out what it was and why it didn't go away.  On top of that my body decided it wasn't going to hold down any foods or liquids and my weight loss went from gradual to DAMN GIRL!

Thru that I was able to get my lung tube out because I wasn't draining very much.  Well the process of removal is pretty barbaric, they literally just pull the damn thing out and it hurts like hell.  The process only lasts a few seconds, but John said watching my body twitch and jerk was like watching a movie for a second.  But you know, it's one of those things, you just put your big girl panties on and suck it up.

Well things didn't really get much better.  I constantly made trips to urgent care and 2 or 3 nights in the hospital, always looking for sources of fever, vomiting, coughing, exhaustion.  No one had any answers.  During all of this, about 8 weeks ago Dr. Krug, my primary oncologist, felt that my kidney function numbers were a little too high.  The number is called Creatinine (I think) and the other number they look at is called BUN.  That last number was ok, it's the first one that was too high.  Not so high that anyone would use the word dialysis, but high enough that you might want to pause any chemo that is filtered through the kidneys.

So we decided on a break from chemo.  Problem was, the break did nothing.  My creatinine number never came down, it actually went up.  The other symptoms that kept sending me to the hospital stayed right on with no real break and on top of all of that it looked like fluid was building up in my left lung again, since I had no tube in there.

On Monday June 10, I had a appointment with Dr. Krug to discuss all of this and he said straight up, I needed to check into the hospital to have the Kidney people look at me, to have the tube put back in and to start a new chemo asap.  Turns out that on top of the kidneys never healing and the left lung filling up with fluid, my tumors in the lung, spine and liver had grown.  So he wanted to give me a new chemo that filters through the liver.  I was fine with this and said let's do it now.  So we headed straight to the hospital and waited hours to get a fricken bed.

So I had a few annoying moments that I just don't have the energy to share right now, but I ultimately got the new tube, which for the record hurts like hell.  They had a tough time putting it in.  Apparently they were dealing with a lot of scar tissue and an old tumor that decided to float around and give them a hard time.  So I am pretty beat up on the left side. 

The kidney people don't think much about my high number, they seem to think everyone is making a big deal out of nothing, which does not make me happy cause I spent 8 weeks having my tumors grow, for nothing.

But here'd the real crap news, I had my routine Brain MRI and I am so spoiled by that one, that I wasn't prepared for the results.  One of my tumors has found new life and is growing and there are an innumerable amount in my brain fluid.  I don't really know how to process this because it all developed so fast.  I had a cat scan done on the brain a little over a month ago and it was fine.  So this really hit out of no where. 

Right now the plan is chemo since radiation can't help me now.  I am in a weird emotional limbo.  I am partially in fighting mode, you know I have been down these tough roads before.  On the other hand this one feels tougher for some reason.  I think it's because I had no warning, had no way to know the brain could change so quickly.  It's going to be a while before I can get used to this.

Oh and the new chemo will cause my hair to fall out again.  Strangely that makes me kind of happy, cause I really hate this crappy brillo pad on my head.

There's the update.