Back Surgery is Scheduled for Today

I remember the night my husband died as if it was yesterday, but really it was 5 months ago that I would wake in the middle of the night to hear him mumble for the last time “I love you too”. Friday, November 4, 2016 Steve was transported to the Hospice home in Providence, RI.  We (Mark and I) wanted him to go the day before, but he told us he didn’t think he was ready and wanted one more night.  When he was placed on hospice less than two weeks earlier, we discussed that he would be transferred to the home before he died.  We didn’t want him to die at home. Friday morning we got up and started getting him ready for the…

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…

As a parent, the last thing we ever want to do is see our children hurt. We’ve raised our girls with so much love and protection in the hopes that they would always feel safe with us. As a family, we’ve been through a lot the past 23 months and we’ve tried to be as honest as we could with the girls, letting them know along the way how much we love them and that everything would always be “okay”. Today we had to do the hardest thing ever… today we told the girls that the chemo isn’t working and the tumors are still growing. And even though daddy was going to continue on chemo the next 6 months, ultimately it’s just to get more…

Steve is doing great.  He’s just tired.  But he feels fine. The side effects from Chemo can come on at anytime but he’s doing really well so that helps.  He had trouble sleeping last night because one of the meds is a steroid – the nurse warned us about it. Steve is also having some back problems which is completely unrelated to the cancer, thankfully.  So his back was also very sore.  After he finally listened to me and took the pain pills they gave him at 2am, he was able to fall asleep and slept through till 10am! Who knew I actually knew what I was talking about! He’s tired still and has napped a few times but in general, he still feels great. …

Steve had another CT Scan last week and it showed that unfortunately the cancer is still spreading in his lungs.  The liver is stable.  He also has some pretty swollen Lympnodes near his lungs.  His CEA is the same as it’s been the last 3 months – 11. We had a really good conversation with the doctor about what is happening and what we should do next.   So here is the plan right now: 1.  We are going to go to Dana Faber and talk to them about clinical trials.  It’s not very likely Steve will do a trail, but we at least want to talk to them about it. 2.  Steve will continue on the chemo he is on right now for 6 weeks…

On June 17, 2014  Steve had his first Colonoscopy.   Thankfully the prep for it wasn’t too bad on him.  The doctor wasn’t expecting to find the tumor because he looked at all the scans beforehand and even he saw nothing in the colon.  So he was pretty curious as to what he’d see.  And so were we.  I was actually wondering if there might not even be a tumor and this would be a rare type of colon cancer.   My husband would be the one to not have something easily found.   Because he likes to be ‘different’. Well, that wasn’t the case.  The doctor did find the tumor and it’s big.  The mass is in the sigmoid colon.  He said it’s pretty much the entire…