Loose Strife

Laura was finally discharged after 9 last night (Wednesday) and we decided to spend the night in Boston. This morning Laura was feeling really lousy — probably because she was off her IV fluids and hadn’t had pain medicine for over 12 hours. I brought up the subject of intrathecal again. I felt there was […]

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I’m at the hospital to pick up Laura. Waiting for the discharge orders. Her neuro-onc felt that there was nothing more that could be offered in the hospital now. This is not really good news. Her symptoms are not under control – the main problem being the vomiting. But anti-nausea drugs don’t seem to work […]

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Laura has been in the hospital now for over three days and is bored, so call her at 617-732-4366. She’ll still be there for at least another two days. The cause of her troubles is still uncertain, a treatment plan hasn’t been settled, and her symptoms aren’t adequately controlled. Not for lack of trying. Laura […]

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This morning Laura agreed to get her shunt checked. I called the neurosurgeon to ask him to grease the wheels on arrival. Instead, we talked at length on the phone during which he argued that a spinal tap wouldn’t be informative and that his office could do a different procedure (called a shunt series) after […]

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This week has been tough for Laura. She hasn’t had a real meal all week and is continuing to slowly lose weight. Headaches are more frequent. Her back and neck pain has worsened, but it’s not clear why; her scans showed no worsening in her bone mets, so maybe it’s from spending so much time […]

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Just a quick note to say that Laura’s visit with her neurosurgeon today was significant only in that he agreed with the radiologist that there was no significant observable problems in her brain MRI. He agreed that all the symptoms together — vision loss, vomiting, headaches, mild dizziness, neck pain — are worrisome and probably […]

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To mi familia grande, our phone is down after the recent storms and isn’t scheduled for repair until Wednesday some time. We don’t have cell phone service here and that satellite internet thingy has been pretty flaky during this last week. And all the storms don’t help. So… to reach us through Wednesday, your best […]

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Laura got the results of her latest PET/CT body scan today. There were no new tumor sites and her existing bone mets were metabolically “quiescent”. We were surprised. The other day Laura asked me where her liver was as she held her mid-section and got weepy. The liver is a common site for metastases in […]

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I am really really pleased to say that Laura is in excellent shape relative to what we were expecting. Her mobility has continued to improve, which has been a big surprise. Her walking is almost back to normal. She now walks up the stairs normally, alternating each leg, she hops out of chairs, the car, […]

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We’ve been back for over a week now and I’m finally getting around to posting a more detailed trip report. You can find photos from our trip at photos.dizz.org/200806AR.  We arrived late on Thursday into Little Rock and crashed at Jerry and Karen’s house, where they had a pig’s mess of roasted pig. It was […]

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