Not a lot has happened since my last post, other than getting my head on straight and putting the panic behind me. Saturday was a bad day, and Saturday night/Sunday morning was even worse, which combined with the uncertainty of the preliminary diagnosis made me imagine the worst.
Monday morning, bright & early, we met with Dr. Bleeker. Very nice guy; I think he mentioned he’s 6’8″ (but wasn’t interested in playing basketball in college) and a Dordt College graduate, so was an instant hit with us for the Dutch connection. He remembers going through several undergrad biology classes taught by Yvonne’s dad, and said the tests in his classes were “legendary.”
Anyway, he had a little news for us on Monday; Friday’s MRI and CT scan showed no other areas of suspicion in the head, neck, or lymph nodes, which is a huge good, but did show a spot on one of the kidneys which is likely cancerous. That’s bad, but not hugely bad, because it’s likely totally unrelated to the problem I’m having in my jaw. It will need to be dealt with, but being caught early, it shouldn’t be a problem getting it out, and being caught early, I get to forego the symptoms that would typically alert someone to the problem. Kind of a get out of jail for not-quite free card. So while it’s not good, it’s just a little bad.
Sadly, he still hadn’t received the final report from the histology lab, so he had nothing more he could tell us regarding the path forward. We were really looking forward to that, but the news he did give us was at least a little encouraging. One of his assistants got on the phone with the lab, and they were hoping to get a final word on the biopsy by Tuesday (today), so Dr. Bleeker promised to call me when he got word on it.
Most of today came and went, and the call finally came about 5:40 this afternoon. Still no final word on the biopsy, but part of the reason they are having trouble is that they don’t have a “live” specimen to work with. So he suggested that they do another surgery to extract another tissue sample from my jaw for biopsy. Not exactly what I wanted to hear, especially when things were finally healing up in there and I was hoping to see some of the stitches falling out. But if that’s what needs to be done, I can suck it up and get through it.
He also said that they would like to take a bone marrow sample for testing; non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer of a type of white blood cell, and because white blood cells are generated in the bone marrow, lymphoma cells also like to hide out there, so that’s another place they can often be found. The lymph nodes are the typical place they are found (hence the name) but because my lymph nodes are asymptomatic, it makes sense to look elsewhere for the disease. He said the procedure to extract the bone marrow can be quite painful, so they’ll likely put me out for that.
While I’m out, they’ll probably perform a PET scan on me as well to determine which bits of me are maybe not functioning properly. He explained that the body normally uses a certain amount of sugar in normal functions; the heart uses more because it works more, and they can tell through a PET scan if other organs/bits are consuming more sugars than they ought, which can be a signal that something’s not right. I don’t pretend to understand the process, but that’s the gist of what I heard, so take that for what it’s worth.
So, more testing. One potential problem in all this is timing; we’re due to leave next week for California to attend Ian’s graduation from USMC Boot Camp. I asked Dr. Bleeker if the testing might interfere with that, and he didn’t seem to think so. He thought we could easily get it in this week still. We may be able to get one of the procedures in tomorrow even. Not really looking forward to that, but I am looking forward to getting it done, and sooner is better I guess.
So, we soldier on, trusting that God has it all in his mighty hands. Yvonne posted something about all of this on Facebook tonight, and it was a huge encouragement to see how many people responded that they will be praying for us.
God is good. All the time.