I’ll be brief because I’m in the ER triage with Lori. On the way to my parent’s house today following her appointments in Indy, Lori began feeling very hard and sharp pains in her arms, thighs, and lower back. We drove the last 15 minutes home and she was wrestling quite a bit with the pain. I noticed it wasn’t routine. Continue reading

We’ve spent the past week getting a new set of scans for review with Dr. S. The breast tumor was significantly larger with lots of bigger nodules around the breast area. Also, her arms were hurting a lot more, and she couldn’t stop the pain even with extra meds. So, we weren’t surprised on Monday when Dr. S. reviewed the scans and found progression of disease in almost every area. It is also in the tissue of the muscles in her arms, and that is causing significant swelling and associated pain. Of course he decided to forego that day’s scheduled chemo infusion, and he laid out a few new options. Continue reading

Thank you all for the prayers and offers to help! We’re doing all right. She had her first good night in the past 5 or 6 days last night! It’s amazing how something simple like that can provide relief for another day. Specifically, I think she slept from 10pm- 4am. Woke up with arm pain and took meds for that. Then slept again until 8am. That’s a huge improvement. Hopefully that continues to happen. She’s also incorporating some physical therapy stretches which may help calm the inflammation of the nodes.

Pain control! Or lack of control…is what we’ve been focused on lately. The pain problem has persisted despite another increase in the pump’s dilauded output. Some days/nights it’s her back, others it is her arms and legs. Yesterday, Lori went to the ER to get some kind of relief. She had tried morphine pills, but they didn’t even begin to help. The ER doc gave her a shot of some extra strength Motrin-like medicine, and it immediately helped alleviate the bulk of the pain. Continue reading

Lori’s brain scans came back all clear!
As far as the second tumor, the biopsy results are still being worked but so far they’ve eliminated ER/PR as a type. Still waiting to find out whether or not it’s HER2 positive. Lori goes to Indy on Monday for another round of chemo, and we may hear then about the final test results.
Great news!

Answer: If you’re diagnosed a second time, you can just laugh it off.

We had a mixed bag of news today. Over the past couple of weeks, Lori has increasingly experienced more pain in her knees, femurs, lower back, shoulders and neck. She had been supplementing her pain pump with daily oral doses of morphine as well as the maximum daily allowable amounts of ibuprofen/Tylenol. Even then, she felt the pain through it all and had trouble sleeping each night. Continue reading

Last Monday, we had another follow-up with Dr. S. We love Dr. S and are so happy to be back with him. He reviewed the bone and organ scans which were recently taken in Dayton, and thankfully he didn’t see anything that alarmed him any more than usual. Bone lesions are still there asa well as small traces in the liver but nothing too bad. Continue reading

We had a busy Christmas season and a great time with both Lori’s family and my family in IL and IN respectively. After Christmas, Lori and I both flew home to NC while the kids stayed at my parent’s house in IN. For the last few days of 2014, Lori finished up her ten radiation treatments at UNC, and we packed up the last of our house. On 31 Dec, we closed with our buyers for the NC home. Two days later, we closed on our new home in OH. I love the new house. Continue reading

Today, we met with Dr Carey again, and she recommended Lori for a small amount of radiation to the primary tumor. She is concerned that the tumor will begin to cause surface problems if it isn’t reduced in size quickly. For reference, the tumor measured 7cm x 5cm last time they checked, and today it was 12cm x 9cm. The nice thing about UNC’s method of care is that there is an entire team of specialists all required to be present every time Lori sees her oncologist. Continue reading

Since my last update, Lori has continued to receive once-a-month Doxil infusions at the UNC Cancer Clinic. Scans had shown progress with the reduced tumor size, and she experienced very few side-effects. However, over the past few weeks, we’ve noticed considerable growth in the tumor. At her latest checkup, Dr. Carey was concerned but needed further testing to see what was happening. Continue reading