Steve’s Cancer Updates

Steve starts radiation today.  He’ll have 10 treatments, Monday-Friday, to keep the tumors that they just removed in surgery, from growing back quickly and compress his spine again. He definitely doesn’t want to have that happen again. He had a CT Scan earlier this week to set up the radiation and the table he had to lay on was very hard so he was in a lot of pain afterwards.  It’s not the same pain as before the surgery but a different area and different type of pain.  But pain is pain. We’ve been spending all our time together since he can’t really go anywhere on his own.  It’s actually been pretty nice because it’s been quality time.  He seems more relaxed about the whole…

Steve’s surgery last week was a success.  The spine surgeons were able to remove the tumors that were compressing Steve’s spinal cord without having to insert the titanium rods.  His bones were surprisingly strong.  They did insert a little cement into the spine where they removed the tumors, just to give it a little more strength. Because they didn’t have to insert the rods, the recovery was much easier.  Steve was up walking around the following day and then doing the stairs a day later. Two days after his surgery, his heart rate was still high – it was running 115-120.   Come to find out it was because he has a blood clot in his lungs.  He was at a high risk for getting one,…

Steve is at Rhode Island hospital and he’s scheduled to have surgery today.  And he’s still smiling… He’s not going to give up easily and without a smile on his face.  I admire that about him so much!

A week ago Wednesday, Steve’s doctor ordered an MRI to get a better look at his spine and the tumors to see if Radiation would be good or not.  When the radiologist read the MRI he contacted Steve’s doctor and suggested that Steve go to the hospital immediately to have the spine doctors look at the MRI.  The concern was that the tumors were too close to his spinal cord and they were afraid of paralysis. So at 10pm last Wednesday night, Steve and I headed to Rhode Island hospital where they gave him a steroid to relieve some of the swelling around the spinal cord to avoid the compression.  The spine doctors then looked at the MRI and decided that with the steroid, there…

Steve has been having a lot more back pain.  It started to get worse last Thursday night.  He had a hard time getting comfortable and could barely move.  It was so hard to see him in so much pain.  Friday morning when I spoke with the doctor, he told him to double up on the pain meds he prescribed him and if it got really out of control to go to the hospital to get something stronger to give him relief.  He was scheduled to have a bone scan on Monday (yesterday) and CT Scan Tuesday (today) so he said we’d talk after those scans to see what was going on. After doubling up on the pain meds when needed, he felt better and got…