HeMan Hubby began his Immunotherapy treatment trial on July 13th.
He had an infusion every 3rd Thursday thru the month of August.
Mid-August there was a scan that showed no change in the original lung tumor...
Side effects of the medications were minimal...
Slight fatigue on Saturday and Sunday following the infusions...
minor aches and swelling in many of his joints...
Surgery to remove the lung tumor and a small lymph node next to it was scheduled for August 30th.
Pre-op was great. Saw the rheumatologist who said the joint pain was arthritis triggered by the immunotherapy drugs...
not uncommon at all.
Surgery day came and the plan was for the lower lobe of the left lung to be removed...
2 hours into the surgery the doc came out to see me...
This is not good when the surgery should have been 6 hours long...
The look on his face said it all...
When he had taken the lung out and turned it over to visualize where the cut should be...
a small area of 6-8 tiny pin-point sized spots was visible in his peripheral vision on the chest wall behind the lung...
Biopsies were done and they were positive for cancer cells.
Oh crap!
So, he made the decision to put the lung- un-cut and in it's original state- back into HeMan HUbby's chest ...
The post-op meeting with Cancer Doc was not great...
but then, it was not bad either.
The tiny area was still in the left chest so the cancer hadn't gone far...
the areas appeared to not be active...
meaning they were very likely dead ,like the original tumor appeared to be...
The immunotherapy seemed to be killing the cancer as predicted so it made sense to continue the immunotherapy protocol ...
Okey Dokey then!
More scans and labs and samples were done, taken, collected for the research trial...
Everything was wonderful...
no other signs of anything...
ANYWHERE!
Yay!
Every 3rd Thursday HeMan Hubby had infusions...
and bloodwork, and stool samples and urine samples and spit samples taken...
for DNA, for research, for health monitoring...
HeMan Hubby was so healthy it was insane.
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| Cumberland Island,GA wild horses and ruins on kayaking trip |
So much so that we went to Florida in mid-October for a week of hiking, biking and an all day kayaking and hiking trip to Cumberland Island.
He felt great...
a little stiffness in his shoulder from the surgery and a little pain in his knees and shoulder on occasion from the arthritis...
But he looked wonderful.
He felt like a million bucks.
He was living his life and enjoying every minute of it.
The scans in November showed some inflammation in the shoulders and knees from the arthritis..
no cancer anywhere but that pesky little lung thing...
December was the same so it was decided that immunotherapy would end and that a few rounds of chemo would start in January ...
'Just to make sure it's all really dead'
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| HeMan Hubby cleaning off the van to head to chemo |
January 11th... my 52nd birthday...
Chemo started.
A low-level drug regimen given every 3 weeks...
February 22nd...
routine scans before the final chemo dose ...
And the plans of Doctors and men came to a screeching halt!
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