Catching up... August, 2008

Sorry it has taken me so long to update our blog... but, I hopefully can catch you up to date with everything that has happened since August.

08/06/08 - Jerry's 3rd chemo treatment - Port a cath with hemotomin (Dr. Bob drained).
08/07/08 - Jerry cronic diarreha 11pm-3am and continued throughout the day.
08/08/08 - notified that I was getting laid off effective 09/12/08.
08/13/08 - Jerry's week off of chemo
08/20/08 - Jerry's 4th chemo treatment
08/23/08 - Jerry in ER severe abdominal pain
08/24/08 - Jerry released from ER.
08/27/08 - Jerry's 5th chemo treatment

08/23-08/24/08 - ER Hospital Stay

Late Friday night (around 11pm) Jerry started having a pain in his abdomen. Did not get much sleep during the night so on Saturday morning he was trying to catch up on sleep while struggling with the continued pain. I had a commitment to work at the Church Saturday morning so I left about 10:30 am. I told Jerry if he needed help to call me on my cell phone and I would come home. At 3:00pm Jerry called and said we needed to go to the Hospital. We arrived shortly later and Jerry was in terrible pain, where they immediately took him into ER. The ER physician came in as soon as possible and ordered X-ray and CT Scan of the abdomen. The nurse came in and gave Jerry some pain medication in his IV. When the CT Scan results were available they noticed that Jerry's gallbladder had a thickened wall and signs of a problem and in order to get a better diagnosis they wanted an Ultrasound of the gallbladder. The ultrasound showed gall stones and sludge in the gallbladder and concerns for surgery. The doctor explained that in a normal health person they would not hesitate to remove the gallbladder. They admitted Jerry into the hospital around 11:00pm Saturday night and started him on IV antibiotics and would not let him have anything by mouth until they decided on surgery or not. On Sunday, I arrived at the hospital to visit with Jerry and see how he was doing. The surgeon arrived to evaluate Jerry's situation and explained to us what the alternatives were and with Jerry's health being compromised with cancer and chemotherapy, they wanted to carefully consider weather or not perform surgery. The surgeon, Dr. D. wanted to wait and discuss the situation with Jerry's oncologist, Dr. Bob. On Saturday, because Jerry was in so much pain he only ate a couple of cookies, in the morning, an a nutrition drink "Boost" before getting admitted to the hospital. They were only giving Jerry ice chips on Sunday, but on Monday started him on Clear liquids. On Sunday Jerry started having diarrhea, but no pain in the abdomen. Monday night I received a call at home to pick up the recent CT Scans; MRI and Bone Scans that Jerry had in March and July for comparisons of the Scans the hospital did on Saturday night. While at the imaging place waiting for copied, Dr. Bob called me and told me he was not able to get in touch with the surgeon and did not want Jerry to have the surgery because of his platelets, and immune system and said he wouldn't be able to heal. Dr. Bob also told me that the CT Scans from the hospital were showing a number of metastases of the bones and was concerned that when Jerry's PSA was at 26.8 the bad cancer cells were attaching Jerry's bones and now that Jerry's on chemotherapy with a PSA of 0.622 the good guys are attaching back and did not want to loose the momentum! As I contacted Jerry to tell him, no surgery, Jerry told me that he had already prepped and that they were coming to pick him up to take him for surgery... I said NO Surgery! Dr. Bob spoke with the surgeon and they agreed that at this time surgery was not urgent and that waiting a month or so would be in Jerry's best interest. They decided to keep Jerry in the hospital while they took him off of IV's and had him eating solid food to make sure he wouldn't get a fever and where he would rest. Tuesday night, Jerry did experience more pain in his abdomen and the doctor's think there is something besides the gallbladder causing the pain, but were not able to diagnose. Jerry continued having diarrhea, but less often and was discharged from the hospital late Wednesday afternoon. Jerry's normal chemotherapy was suppose to be yesterday, but since he was in the hospital we will be going today.

Introducing Danya "Dannie" Great Grand Niece.

Danya Elizabeth Nestle (King)
Born - Tuesday, July 15 at 4:11 pm
Weight - 6 lbs. 8 ozs.
Length - 19-1/2"
Parents - Christine Nestle/Nathan King

08/06/08 - Chemo Therpy & Hormone Blockade

Today was Jerry's third (3rd) treatment. The Good News is that his PSA went from a high of 26.9 to 18.0 (last week) to 4.96 yesterday. However, this was not going to be a normal routine visit. It started when the nurse was going to access his port and noticed the area was swollen to about the size of 1/2 tennis ball and very dark purple. Lydia said "I'm not touching that port". Lydia call Dr. Javadi to take a look and Dr. Javadi said we needed to go and see Dr. Bilchik, MD PH.D FACS Surgical Oncology. However, Dr. Bilchik was in OR and could not be reached. Drs. office left him a message to call back. In the mean time, Drs. office started did additional blood cultures to determine if their was an infection and started the Chemo and Hormone Blockade IV's. As Jerry was relaxing getting his IV's. Dr. Bob stopped and said hello and asked how Jerry was doing. Jerry said okay, but mentioned the port which Dr. Bob took a look at and immediately said we need to aspirate this hemotomin immediately. He called the nurse to move Jerry from the infusion room into an examination room. Once moved they started sedating Jerry for the procedure. Dr. Bob, Dr. Javadi, Mary PA, Carla PA, Lydia were all in the room working and/or observing as Dr. Bob extracted approximately 5cc of stuff out of the port area. For a while there it was kinda a circus. Otherwise, the treatment went as expected. About 11:00pm Jerry started feeling the sedation wear off but, then started having diarrhea and had about 12 bouts with it until about 3:00am. Will update you as Jerry's condition changes.