It’s late at night and Lennie is sound asleep after another treatment in the Hyperthermia Chamber earlier today. Everything seemed normal until about 11:30 at night when he suddenly felt dizzy – room spinning dizzy. He vomited and then had a bout of diarrhea. Lennie was pretty shaken and scared. His temperature had risen easily in the Chamber today, so I am hoping that this upset to his system is from the fever.
I had asked the doctor to redo the CEA test that had come back at 27.0 – up from 20.7. The new test came back at 31. Today another CEA had dropped half a point. After researching the accuracy of this test on the Internet I have discovered that it is anything but accurate as a tumor marker. It has many false positives and can be affected by many factors, such as the start of a treatment or most often from the presence of inflammation. Inflammation is almost certainly a factor this time in his colon. Taking this into consideration, Dr Alvarez ordered another MRI – this time on his lungs and liver. He said that even though he truly believes that the marker went up due to the presence of inflammation, he would be medically negligent if he did not check out his lungs and liver. If you remember, we did have the thermal scan that showed absolutely no involvement of any kind in his liver. Lungs unfortunately do not show any abnormalities in a thermal image. The MRI was yesterday and we will get the results on tomorrow.
When you think of Mexico it is natural to think of endless blue skys, warm days with the sun beating down and balmy nights. Nope. We have had one day in the mid 70s, that would be about 24 C. The nights are still around 45 F. Sunday was a beautiful day and Lennie’s daughter Alissa arrived for 4 days to be here for her dad and she just left this morning. Lennie and the hotel manager, Daniel, have become friendly so it was he and his two children who drove us to the border to pick up Alissa and then the 6 of us drove about an hour down the coast to Ensenada. On the way we stopped for fresh coconuts that were husked and opened in front of us and filled with about 12 oz each of coconut water and tender fleshy coconut that was later scooped out for us. 
Along the coast runs the border fence, separating Mexico from the US. In one of the photos you can see hundreds of white crosses attached to a section of fence. These crosses represent the deaths of people that were killed trying to get over the fence into the US. There is still an armed border patrol that was just out of sight under the sand dunes. In the tourist info on Ensenada’s website they promote the grey whale watching in February. “Stand on the shore and see the grey whales swim into the shallow lagoons for calving.” That is what I was hoping to see in Ensenada. When we arrived there no one knew what we were talking about. They had whale tour boats for $140. None of the fishermen had ever heard of the whales coming close to shore. We didn’t want to dissapoint the kids who were looking forward to a boat ride now so Daniel made a deal with a fisherman to take us out for a half hour – all of us for $18. The day had turned so grey and foggy that by now we could see nothing out on the water – even the larger boats coming towards us. We saw nothing until we were docking back on shore when a sea lion swam right up to our boat! it seems they hang around for scraps that the fishermen toss back into the water. There was a pelican sitting there as well getting fed. We could have never done this drive the last time
we were here. It would have been intolerable for Lennie with his every-half-hour bathroom stops and the pain of sitting. This time is different. I know that he is getting stronger each day with just a few setbacks. So tomorrow we will have the clearest picture of his overall health. We will know where we stand with the tumor and what is left. We can then decide if we go or we stay for a little while longer.
This past week has been very hard on both of us. Lennie’s intense treatments are leaving him wiped out on some days. Other days he is looking as if nothing is wrong with him. The hotel staff have noticed it the most. They say that he looks like a completely different man than the one who stayed here a few months ago and could barely walk across the lobby on most mornings. Now here he is walking over a mile to the clinic!
Adios, Kathryn
www.kathrynsmith.ca