CEA Number Update

Steve finished his 7th round of Chemo last Friday and it went well.  He started eating more as his mouth sores healed and had a generally good weekend. I just heard from the doctor and he said the surgeon doesn’t think that there is any need to worry about what they saw in the CT scan and they are leaving his colon as it is.  They will just keep an eye on how he’s feeling and if he starts to have any problems. We are relieved because surgery means no chemo and we are not ready to stop because the tumors are still there. This past round of chemo the doctor reduced one of the meds to hopefully stop the mouth sores from coming back….

Our amazing community is hosting an evening of Yoga in honor of Steve this week.  I can’t even express in words what this means to our family.  Every week our friends amaze us with their love, support and generosity.   Calling ourselves Lucky doesn’t even describe what we feel.  LOVED is really more like it. Steve is a very proud man, so letting them do this for us has been very hard for him to accept.  But he’s realized that this is a way that all the people around us can help me, can take some sort of burden off of me.  It’s also a way for him to see how much love we have around us. I recently posted this on Facebook and I know…

My families world was turned upside down in June 2014.  I’ve decided to share it here on our family blog to possibly help someone going through the same thing.  I’ve searched high and low for months for support groups and finally found one online.  I have so many questions and concerns that really only someone who’s gone through this, can help with. Here is our story: On Friday May 30, 2014 my husband Steve came home complaining of chest pains.  He was thinking he had gas and then ate dinner.  After dinner it didn’t get any better so he stayed home while I took Holly to her softball game.  I made him promise me that if it got worse, he’d take an aspirin.  He assured…

Steve finished his 8th round of chemo about a week ago.  This was the 2nd round of chemo with the reduced 5-FU (along with a reduction of all meds due to his weight loss).   The first time he didn’t see much of a difference as far as side effects go, but the second time he did. The 5-FU is responsible for the mouth sores and the tingling in his hands, fingers and feet mostly.  I guess it’s also responsible for the exhaustion because this last round he wasn’t as tired either.  He thought we has getting a mouth sore but it never really turned into one.  And his taste buds finally came back this weekend.  When he woke up Friday morning and realize that we…

I had to take Steve to the hospital today. His breathing hasn’t been very good and I just knew it needed to be addressed. I’m so glad we went because his oxygen level was VERY low. They did a CT scan to check for a new blood clot, but found nothing. There is a little fluid in his lung but the doctor thinks it’s old and doesn’t believe it is related to this. They did hear some crackling in one of his lungs so perhaps it’s a little collapsed but again, he didn’t think it would cause this much distress. There is some progression of disease in his lungs so it could be a combination of everything. They admitted him and have him on oxygen…

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…