Well, a few things have happened since I last updated everyone. For starters, Mom spent a little over a week enjoying herself in Texas with family. It was great for her to get a little break from treatment.
Ever since the last round of radiation, Mom has been quite tired. We were told that it was a side effect of the radiation, but that she should continue to get strength back as more time passed. She still was able to accomplish a lot in a day, but just didn't feel right.
About a week ago, she started to experience a few headaches and had issues with some nausea and a bit of uneasiness on her feet. She knew that something wasn't right. So many of her friends who have gone through this (especially brain cancer) have told her that when something isn't right, you need to trust your instinct; you know your body better than anyone. She insisted on another MRI, and after looking at the results, the doctors realized that two of the tumors had grown fairly significantly in the past several weeks since treatment had finished. The doctors were quite alarmed by this, and realized that they need to take action immediately. They put her on oral steroids to reduce the swelling of the brain, and scheduled a meeting of the tumor board to discuss her options as a group. We were scheduled to meet with the tumor board and discuss their plan of treatment on Monday, with possible Gamma knife surgery (that was the anticipated course of treatment according to the radiation doctor) likely for Tuesday.
Early Monday morning we had a change of plans. I was staying with Mom, as she was not supposed to be alone (and we anticipated a meeting with the tumor board Monday morning), when she woke me up about 1:30 AM Monday morning. She came upstairs and told me that she was in a great deal of pain. She told me that she was at an 8 out of 10 on the pain scale (this coming from a woman who only took one pain pill after her bi-lateral mastectomy, one after her reconstruction, and delivered two children with no anesthesia.) I knew this must be some pretty serious pain. She had shortness of breath, sharp pain in her left side, and could hardly move because of the pain. She suggested that maybe we call the hospital and see what they thought we should do. Being unsure of who in the world to talk to at the hospital about this, and knowing full-well what they would tell us if I told them that she was having pain in her chest, we were proactive and took her to the emergency room. While in the ER they thought the pain may be caused by a blood clot in the lung, a heart attack, a kidney stone, or possibly even bone cancer. After looking at the chest x-rays carefully, and realizing that she was on an oral steroids for the brain swelling, the doctor noticed that there was a pocket of air under her diaphragm. He quickly suspected, and further x-rays confirmed, that she likely had a perforated ulcer that had caused a hole in her stomach wall allowing stomach acid and air to leak in her abdominal cavity. This is a known side effect from prolonged usage of oral steroids, but in her case the benefits outweighed the risks. Left untreated for any longer than a couple of hours the condition would have been fatal. She was rushed into emergency surgery. While in surgery, they determined that the hole was in her stomach (which is much better that in being further down in the intestines, which would likely resulted in a colostomy, and would have been a lot worse for infection) and removed part of her stomach and stitched it back up. The abdominal cavity was a little infected, but the surgeon believes that we caught it early enough that we can beat the infection. She is recovering at St. Francis now and is expected to go home later this week if everything goes well.
The tumor board met yesterday and discussed the plan for the brain. They need to allow her time to recover from the infection in her abdomen before they do anything else, though. Dr. Klopfenstein said that ideally, she would go home and rest for a couple of days to build her strength up for the brain surgery, which will likely take place next week.
The tumor board decided that one of the tumors is too large to do focused radiation (Gamma knife) on. They instead plan to do invasive surgery early next week, hopefully, to remove that tumor. They will then, in the days to follow, do focused radiation on the other tumors/lesions. This is a fairly serious surgery, but the potential benefit or quality or life afterward outweighs the risk.
I apologize if I haven't had a chance to contact everyone in the past couple of days. I have tried to contact everyone that I could think of, but complete exhaustion, both physically and emotionally have overwhelmed me since the early hours of Monday morning. Thank you all for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. I will update everyone when I know more.
Barbara Ann Blake
