Monday, March 26, 2012

I hate Mondays

Today has been absolutely insane.

Steve had to be at MD Anderson at 9:30 am to get his PIC line put in his arm.  He finished up with this around 12:30.  After finishing up with that, he had a couple of calls he had to make for work.  We had a few hours to kill (so we thought) and headed over to Red Lion, a British Pub so he could have fish and chips for lunch.  We got back just in time for our 3:30 appointment with Dr. Kim.  Whoops, the appointment was at 2:15!  I don't know how we both missed that one!  Oh well, they are so very accommodating.  We got back fairly quickly to see Dr. Kim.  He went over Steve's CAT scans from yesterday.  Although at first it didn't sound too encouraging to us, Dr. Kim quickly reassured us that the results were actually good.  Could they have been better?  Sure.  But, they were still positive.  The first thing to keep in mind is that we are comparing this CAT scan to a PET scan.  It's kinda like comparing apples to oranges.  The way the scans are dissected across your body are different, so the comparison will not be 100% comparable.  Anyhow, the scan showed that there were NO new metastasis.  This is great news.  Melanoma is a SUPER fast spreading cancer.  The fact that it has not spread anywhere else is great news.  The scans showed that the tumors he does have have shrank, but by very, very little.  (Again, it's hard to say since we are comparing a PET vs a CAT scan).  BUT,  like Dr. Kim said, Steve had the PET scan done in January and didnt start treatment until February.  From January to February the tumors could quite possibly have grown and then the treatment has shrunk them down to their current sizes.  So, basically we will not really know 100% how this treatment is working for 6 more weeks, 2 more treatment cycles.  After 2 more cycles, he will have another CAT scan and then we will be comparing apples to apples.  Dr. Kim, however seemed very pleased with how things are going.  Steve's body tolerates the treatment well, and the cancer has not spread, and the tumors have went down some.  So, all in all we are ok with those results.  After we left that appointment we headed down to admitting.  They let us know that there were no beds available on the 10th floor.  Steve can ONLY have his treatment done on the 10th floor.  Sigh.  Then they let us know that no one was set to be discharged tonight either.  After Steve and I made a bit of a fuss, they let us know they were going to try and move some patients off of the 10th floor that did not HAVE to be on that floor.  The lady in charge of admissions told us to go home and she would call us late tonight, or we would be priority tomorrow morning.  We decided just to get a hotel room instead of driving all the way home and then possibly turning right back around.  We love using priceline.com name your own price, so that's what we did.  We got a nice, swanky, dowtown, 4 star hotel for $65.  Score! It's too cute!

I went ahead and took lots of pics, because they just called and said they will have a room at MD Anderson for us ready by 9pm.  Oh well, it was a nice relaxing 2 hour stay here at ICON Hotel!!!!  So, we are fixing to load back up, stop and have dinner and then head on back to MDA.  Like I said, it has been a crazy day!  (Did I mention I'm going on 3 1/2 hours of sleep!)

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