An educational and serious post

There seems to be a bit of confusion when I talk to people regarding what Chris has and what we are looking at. Keep in mind that it is very rare to catch lung cancer before it has spread and that is one reason why there is such a small success rate in long term survival. There are also more people who have recently received the link to this blog and it may be easier for them to start here than scroll through all the pages. These posts are designed to keep people up to date with what is going on but is presented in a straightforward way so that it's easy to read and give you some insight as to what we are going through. I have largely refrained from presenting this as the glass being half empty, and I fear that may be giving people an unrealistic view of how serious this is.

Some background

There was a biopsy done on a small tumor behind Chris's left ear on Feb 23rd. Two days later we got a phone call and the ENT said he "did not like what he saw" but he did not offer any more details. Chris mentioned he was going for a bronchoscopy the next day, but due to the two day snow storm we decided to reschedule. The bronchoscopy was March 1 and when we went to see the pulmonary doctor on March 4th, he told Chris that it was stage IV lung cancer. The next day, he had a PFT which is a breathing test and then on the 8th he went for a PET scan that would be used to identify all the places that the cancer is in. On the 12th we met with the oncologist who said she feared we are dealing with a very aggressive cancer and as such, time was of the essence and we would need to get the MRI's done on the brain and the thoracic region, go in for the port, and essentially start treatment on 3/30. On the 18th, Chris had two of the three MRI's and later that day wound up in the ER because some clots had broken loose from the legs and wound up blocking some of the arteries in his lungs. All the plans changed as the radiology oncologist found some very, very small lesions in the brain, something that happens in a very high number of lung cancer patients and Chris underwent 10 treatments.


Fast forward to today, this is what we are dealing with. Chris is on cumaudin which will prevent new clots from forming, but all chemo drugs have a potential risk of bleeding, so he will need to be watched closely after his initial treatment. The benefits outweigh the risks at this point as there is no choice. Chris recognizes this to but we do not go into details.

Everything that can possibly be done for him is being taken care of. There is still a very high quality of life and he is tolerant of all the medications that he has to take. He's also put up with countless blood tests, diagnostic tests, 10 radiation treatments, scans and everything that needs to be done to prepare someone to battle cancer. In terms of the cancer spreading, one thing we do know is that between the third week of January when they identified "something" from a CT scan and when Chris had the pet scan on March 8th, the tumor had not changed size or shape so it could be that as the cells become less "differentiated" they slow down their rate of reproduction. That last sentence comes from someone who failed high school chemistry but I have learned that the more reproduction that occurs, the less and less it looks like it's predecessors and therefore maybe it gains more time before it has to divide again.