All is Good

Yesterday's blood tests were good, levels are where they should be.  He gets one more on Tuesday just to be sure they remain that way.  That prednisone works wonders.  Next is January 7 when he gets the PT scans and MRI's, etc. and finds out if phase 1 worked at all.  Then the next day he sees the doctor and gets the first infusion of phase 2.  He will get 6 of those, 2 weeks apart, we hope.  The best part of yesterday is the couple we met in the waiting room.  He had melanoma in the lungs and liver, note I said "had".  He went through a clinical trial with Dr. Weber and has been cancer free for 2 years.  He still gets maintenance infusions but they're getting so they are pretty far apart.  There is hope, lots of it.

Blood Work, Blood Work and More Blood Work

Friday's blood work showed high liver numbers....still, so they started him on prednisone again, 100 mg for 5 days, 90 mg for 5 days, etc.  Total of 40 days by the time he is weaned off.  Within a day he was not tired all the time, breathing got better and almost no coughing.  Had more blood work done this morning, just got the results, 2 numbers are down but one is up.  Again, they have never seen anything like it.  More blood work Wednesday along with a visit with the doctor.  They are really baffled.

 

He's golfing tomorrow, yippy!  He's excited about that one.

Got Doctor Baffled

Like I mentioned in the previous post, the doctor thought that his tiredness, lack of energy and labored breathing was due to the medication effecting his pituitary and/or thyroid glands but the tests came out fine.  Then he thought maybe low testosterone, but that was fine.  They did not give him his infusion today, the doctor didn't want to give him more of the same thing until he knew exactly what was going on plus his liver function numbers were up again.  They did a chest x-ray and that was fine.  I was really relieved about that one since he coughs and is short of breath.  He is now questioning if there is some kind of infection, kidney or liver (hepatitis) going on, so they did a urine & a couple of blood cultures.  We don't have the results of that yet.

 

Had things gone as expected he would not have to go back to Moffitt until January 7th, but he needs more blood work on Friday then a doctor's visit on Wednesday.  The doctor said he has not seen this reaction in this study so he is going to watch him really close.  So we are just taking it one day at a time,  I want to thank you all for your prayers and good wishes.

More Side Effects

Had to visit the doctor again yesterday.  Don has been extremely tired, sleeps at least 18 hours a day.  What really concerned me was that his breathing is becoming labored.  Knowing how fast melanoma travels, I could picture all of these new tumors in his lungs, especially since he had to skip the third infusion.  Since they want him to call for every little thing, he called on Wednesday.  He told them he was playing golf on Thursday, they told him to keep them posted.  On Friday he couldn't even get out of his own way, much less play golf so he called the hospital.  When the doctor heard he couldn't play golf he said "get him in here right away".  So we went in on Friday and had blood work done.  His rash is coming back but not severe.  This tiredness is another classic side effect since the drugs in the infusion sometimes effects the pituitary and/or thyroid gland.  We are now waiting for the results of the blood tests.  If these glands are being effected it would make him very tired and they can give him medication for it.  I was quite relieved.

 

I mentioned before that the drugs he gets don't kill the cancer, they boost the immune system so his body can kill the cancer.  What I don't believe I mentioned is that this combination of drugs is made especially for him.  They originally did many, many blood tests and some DNA testing to come up with the right combination for him.

 

The owner or founder of the restaurant "Outback" just donated $5 million to Moffitt Cancer Center for melanoma research.  You bet we'll be eating there more often.