Is there Light at the end of the tunnel-Part Two

Light at the End of the Path Poster by WhiteOaksPhotos

After hearing the doctor say those dreadful words 'Its a Matter of Life or Death' what choice did we have but to get off our ass and do something.  The doctor in Atlanta did not pan out for us, in between scheduling, insurance screw ups, traffic and wasting time, my husband and I decided to find our own doctor.

Yes, we did a Google search and we did find another doctor who performed the operation my husband needed which was bladder removal using robotics.  Obviously today not a lot of doctors do bladder removal the old fashion way because we had a hard time finding one.  When all is said and done, weeks of times were wasted and out only thought was how much further in the bladder is the cancer spreading!

The new doctor we found was not playing any games, he said he was going to run a ton of test to make sure he knew of everything going on.  Who would have guess you could have so many different scans done! NOT to mention in the process of all of these scans we found out that my husband is allergic to contrast!  So be warned.. we did not know this until I did research online... if you have contrast injected one of the side effects could be shortness of breath and uneasy breathing.  If you have that problem, that is a sign you are having an allergic reaction to contrast, so be sure to inform your doctor of this! Oh, just a FYI after I brought this to the nurses attention; the reaction my husband had was in fact a sign he was  allergic to the contrast.

The day the scan results came in.......

Oh, happy joy, joy when we were sitting in the doctors office waiting on him, we tried really hard to not allow our minds to go places where they shouldn't go..... Once doc walked we both knew.. they found something else, damn-it!  The doctor had my husband go to several different specialist including a kidney doctor, heart doctor and cancer doctor. The doctor explained an area showed up in his chest and he needed to have it biopsied.  So hear we go again, more doctor visits, more test and guess what, cancer was showing up everywhere! When we finally got settled in with the cancer doctor there we found out that my husbands cancer has spread to five other locations.  The Cancer doctor explained that if they were to go in and start removing all of the cancerous places, it would make him feel like a butcher shop, so the plan was CHEMO!

When you hear the word CHEMO you automatically go to the thought, damn I am going to lose my hair.  This is actually true, we had to take a Chemo 101 class to teach us all of the side effects and how to handling them and the lady said when the majority of the people hear the word Chemo they automatically go to the though of losing their hair.

The plan was to do three strong sessions of chemo than have my husband examined again.  Each chemo session involves, one long dose of chemo one week, the second week a smaller dose of chemo and the third week you are off which mean no chemo injections.  We were at the cancer center for eight and half hours for the first chemo visit, four and half hours during the second chemo visit.  My husband was holding up pretty fair... until the sodium in his blood starting to drop.  When this happens, moods change, movement becomes harder, you feel disoriented, confused and very very low energy!  During the second session of the Chemo, my husband stopped being the man I knew and was becoming someone else. I brought it to the attention of the nurse and doctor and they decided my husband needed to have a MRI. Here we freaking go again, another scan which my husband was not crazy about anyway... he has developed a cast of claustrophobia so having the MRI done was not a thrill for him.  The very next day we got a telephone call from the doctor..... OMG!!!!


To be continued........