This morning I did the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I said good bye to my husband Steve. He peacefully passed away at 6:20 am and is no longer suffering. His soul is free from cancer, so he won!
Thank you all so much for your prayers, friendship and love over these past 2+ years.
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…
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…
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…
It’s been about a month since I updated and I realize some of you are thinking something is up since I haven’t updated. I’m here to tell you NO, nothing is “UP”… all is good. Steve took a cycle off from Chemo and ultimately had a month break. It was a nice break and Steve bounced back amazingly and we took full advantage of it. We went to Disney with the girls! We surprised them with a trip. It was a trip we all needed. You see, we love going to Disney as a family. We go every other year and it’s the biggest thing we do. And the girls love it. We all love it actually. It’s our “family thing” to do that we…
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…