It's been one year since Marye was in University Hospital with a severe gall bladder infection. She was admitted for 17 days and between the infection and pneumonia that she contracted in the hospital, it was a pretty rough stretch. Since then, she's struggled through several different chemo drugs with varying levels of side-effects and efficacy. Overall, though, she is in a substantially similar condition to what she was last spring. So, maybe to celebrate the first anniversary of her going into the hospital, we found ourselves in the Norton ER late one Saturday night, almost exactly one year to the day as she did last year.
One the very night that I made my last post, she was having a fair amount of pain in her side, which she recognized as the gall bladder pain from last year. When her temp went over 102, I knew it was time to go downtown. So, there we were, at 01:30 am, in the emergency room, getting the usual CT scan and blood work. To make a long story short, she was admitted on Sunday morning, and went on a regimen of antibiotics and fluids to treat a mild infection. The fever broke pretty quickly and her blood work started looking better almost immediately. By Monday evening, she was feeling a little better, although the pain in the gall bladder takes longer to clear up. But she was ready to come home, and the whole thing was over in less than 48 hours. Not too bad.
Again, those gall bladders are really touchy, and she did have some pain for a few more days, but it was not nearly as bad as last year when she had a major infection. The CT scan showed the gall bladder collapsed (good), and the main tumor in her liver measured at 4.6 cm, down from 6 cm in November. This is a different CT scan machine than the one that she usually gets done, so it's kind of like comparing apples to oranges regarding the other cancer findings. But you can't deny a shrinkage from 6 to 4.6 cm.
That Thursday, Marye's blood numbers looked much better, but not quite good enough for chemotherapy, so she got another week off. This past Thursday, everything looked absolutely normal (blood-wise) and she took her treatment. She is scheduled for a CT/bone scan and MRI this week, so we're anxiously awaiting the results of that. Otherwise, she is back on treatment and is holding her own. She still has some bad days when she feels pretty lousy. Nothing much to say about that, that hasn't been said many times already. It does take an emotional toll, though.
Anyway, I'll post again later this week when we get the scan results back. Until then...
-C
