Tuesday, November 17, 2015

11/17/15 MRI was today

Hey, friends!  Guest blogger Steve here.  Long time, no write...thought I would give you a break, but now I'm back with a brief update. 
There's a silly folk song about "the cat came back", which is actually a scream, especially if you don't like cats (and perhaps even if you do).  The narrator talks about all the things he or his pals do to the cat, but it always comes back, usually the very next day.  You see, they thought he was a goner, but he wouldn't stay away.  I am sure you have heard it.  If not, thank heavens for You Tube (try the Muppets version...it is especially good).  Boy the things people did to that poor little cat, but he always managed to come back.  You get my drift.
Well, it's funny if it's a cat.  Not so funny if it's cancer which comes back.  Darnit.  Well, it's back, and we are going to be just as dogged at getting rid of it as those people in that song.  If it comes back, we'll do something else.  In the song, a guy pays a kid a dollar to get rid of the cat.  I won't say how...it's morbid.  In our case, that verse would start out, "So she showed her health insurance card to the pharmacy tech who mixed up some poison in just the right amount..."  Yep, that's what we're doing, poisoning this cancer. 
So, here my hero Gabrielle is starting a fresh round of chemo this week (Doxil) with a much more intrepid "can do" attitude than I could ever hope to muster.  I don't know much about Doxil other than three things: 1.  It is supposed to help knock back that persistent cancer (see "the cat came back" stuff above).  2.  It is starting to make her hair thin, even after a few short days.  3.  For some reason it has made her better at Scrabble.  I don't know what the mechanism is for any of these things, just observations I have noted (doctors love to know about mechanisms of how things work).
On top of that, she has had horrible pain in her right hip bone (actually the ileum) for several days, which was getting concerning for possible bony spread of the cancer.  She has been fairly miserable the past few days and has had to resort to taking a few stronger pills than aspirin.  This morning, she had an MRI of the hip.  Turns out, the bones look good!  Praise God!  The source of the pain was an inflamed butt muscle tendon (that's the lay term for it).  Yep, the ol' gluteus was the culprit!  In the next few days, she hopes to get a steroid injection to quiet things down. 
We have been quite uplifted that the scan was good and that this was just a little bump in the road.  At the same time, we have several friends who have not seen such favorable results with their medical tests, so we like to remember them in our prayers as well.  So that's it for now. 
Wishing you all the best on this blustery November day.  And remember, Thanksgiving is coming soon.  So much to be thankful for, even amidst the hard times. 

1 comment:

  1. Dearest Dudleys,
    More prayers for your sweet Gabrielle and for all of you as you continue to trust in our Great Physician and Healer. Love the humor and upbeat attitudes you all employ while God and modern medicine work together in healing. Here's to faith, courage, love, and plenty of ice cream.
    ~Laurie Mendes, SPU

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