This doctor's the right one - 12/30/10

I think we are finally seeing the doctor that will get us through this.

The kids had dentist apts today so we drove to Meadville straight from there with everyone tagging along. I probably would have opted to leave them at home (having a 15 year old is kind of nice! HA!!) but the timing was too close. And since I want to be involved in all that I can be, me taking the kids and Jeff going himself was not an option either.

I knew this appointment would be long. I packed a movie and the portable DVD player. The kids were lectured before we got to the office on how I expected them to behave-not that the behavior was any different from what I would expect otherwise. But, I wanted to make sure. I was pleasantly surprised when we finished the apt an hour and a half later by the number of people who stopped me to tell me how good the kids were. I was hoping for reports like that, but you can't really ask the staff because even if not good, they would probably stutter around and say that they were fine. But I got to walk out into the lobby and have the volunteer/greeter stop me and tell me they were so good he had to take a picture of them. An older lady also sitting in the waiting room like my kids, told me they were excellent.  That does a mom proud! And I made sure to tell them too!

Our visit with the doctor was a mixed bag. The not so great news is that the PET scan showed the lymph nodes are effected throughout his body, not just in the neck. The doctor said this could have been in his system for up to a year already because it is a very slow moving cancer. He has no other signs so if not for the start of high blood pressure who knows when we may have found out.  On the other hand, because it is so slow moving, we are not in immediate need to deal with this and the month we have been putting things off between this visit and the next, ect is not hurting him at all.

 

This is a cancer that usually affects older people. Avg age around 60. If this would be diagnosed in someone in their 80s, no treatment is usually given. However, since Jeff is relatively young (yes, that is a wifely crack since he just had his 50th birthday! LOL!) he will start treatment. We aren't sure exactly what drugs and what the time frames will be right now. He will go in on Jan 13 for a bone marrow biopsy. That will help them determine 1) whether this is more of a leukemia or more of a lymphoma [really makes no difference in the long run] and 2) exactly what chemo drugs and treatment plan will be used.

 

It looks like in general it will be something every 3 or 4 weeks  for 4-6 months. We will find out more specifics after the bone marrow biopsy. Those results will take at least a week to come back.  I'm hoping we know some specifics by the end of the month.

 

I will say that I was very impressed with the way the doctor has been in scheduling the bone marrow biopsy.  I asked him if Jeff would need to take that whole day off of work. He said that would be best and asked what day of that week would work for us. I told him that Jeff was 7-3 Monday- Wednesday but we could get him off if we had to. He then asked about Thursday and Friday. When I told him that Jeff was off those days, he didn't even look at the early part of the week. Just told us that since Jeff was off and it worked better for us, we'd do it on Thursday morning. The time however was pretty much set for 800. Now I just have to get my kids to school that day somehow- but that will be easy compared to the rest of this journey!