Hope

This week has been SUPER busy with doctor appointments, radiation, more imaging tests, and blood work… As wonderful as it is to be home, at least in the hospital, everyone comes to you. Lol.
Tuesday morning, David was able to meet with the oncologist that specializes in melanoma. It was the first, real optimistic conversation we’ve had in the last three weeks. He said the medication David is starting (it’s not chemo or immunotherapy… It’s a different kind of medication: tafinlar and mekinist) has an 80% chance of working! 🙂 If it doesn’t work, they have other medication they can try, as well. If it does work, he has a 60% chance of going into remission, which could last years. He told David he could potentially start to feel better within a week already. Of course, David is still healing from his two brain surgeries, but if he wasn’t in so much pain, it would help his healing and strengthening go much faster. David was able to start his medication Tuesday night. It feels good that we are finally doing something to stop the cancer.
Wednesday David had his last radiation treatment on his back! It feels really good to be done with that part of his treatment. This upcoming week, he will go back in to get the mapping done on his brain (that’s where they do imaging to make a plan on how they are going to treat the area) and then next week he should start his treatments on his brain. They aren’t radiating the whole brain, just the area that they removed the tumor from. This is because they are worried that there could possibly be more growth on a cellular level there, so they want to try to kill any of that off.
Thursday David got the staples out of his head from his surgery. His neurosurgeon is very passionate about David’s case and stressed how he is going to always have it in the back of his head about David potentially getting his bone flap back one day. I can’t remember if I went into this whole thing before… but in case I didn’t, I’m going to do a quick recap. After David’s brain surgery, removing the tumor, He started bleeding in his head again, so they had to quickly take David back at that point to stop the bleeding, and due to the swelling David had in his brain, the Dr had to keep his bone flap (the part of the skull they removed to get to his brain) off. The process to put the bone flap on would mean first, waiting for all the swelling to go down, and then another surgery and then staying in the hospital an additional week after that. That would also mean no radiation on that area for an additional two weeks after the surgery. Once his brain is radiated, it makes the process of putting his bone flap back on very difficult (almost impossible). We were faced with this decision about the time we found out David’s melanoma type and we decided to forego getting the bone flap on, so he could get out of the hospital and start his actual melanoma treatment. This means that David’s bone flap will potentially never be put back on, which means he has to wear a helmet every time he gets up, but his neurosurgeon would love to find a way to get it back on David.
David has a lot of fluid retention in the lower half of his body. (We figured out about 20 pounds worth). He’s moving around as much as he can, and when he sits or lays, he has his feet elevated, so he’s doing as much as he can with that. He had some imaging done, and everything looked good (no blood clots or anything) so that’s a relief. He saw his nephrologist (Kidney doctor) on Thursday (who monitors his sodium level). His levels dropped a little bit more, so she increased his dosage on his medication to help with that and that should help with some of that fluid retention. He also started another medication called Lasix to help get rid of that extra fluid too. David is going to feel so much better once he doesn’t have all that extra fluid!!
Friday we kept the older kids home from school and had a family day. We built legos together and just enjoyed our time. The littles (Tony, Grace and Caleb) were at my moms, so it was some really nice, quality time spent with our big kids. A day that all of us needed!
This upcoming week should be A LOT slower, so we are thankful for that. A time to rest a little bit more and hopefully David will start feeling better, now that he’s been on his cancer meds for a week.
Thank you, as always, for all of your prayers and support!! Not a day goes by that we aren’t overwhelmingly thankful for all of you.
Prayer requests:
-For complete healing of David’s body
-For the cancer meds to start working (without any side effects) and for David to start feeling better
-For the fluid in David’s body to go down
-For David’s sodium to level out
-For strength for David (physically and emotionally)
-Renewed strength and energy for my family, as they are still watching our Littles until David is a bit stronger
-For our children, as they are adjusting to life with Daddy home, and how it’s different than what they’ve known before