Today is Lennie’s birthday.
It was exactly one year ago today that Lennie started bleeding from his rectum and left for Mexico. At that time his rectal tumor was blocking the passage by 85% and had metastasized to his lungs, seminal vesicles, lymph nodes and a spot on his spine. About 4 months later the metastasis was gone from everywhere except the lymph nodes and the main tumor in his colon was down by about 75% and only blocking his colon about 1/4. Life was going well and we were happy with his progress.
It was a few months after that on February 18 that he went out without me and ate an entire pineapple that started the chronic diarrhea and devastation to his body that would follow. He lost weight, he lost muscle mass and the cancer started to grow.
This week he has had another CAT scan and a colonoscopy. The results are that although the previous metastasis had gone, the cancer has now spread to his liver and two lymph nodes that are responsible for having shut down his right kidney. The main tumor has also grown and has now cut off his rectum passage by 90%. This devastating news has left us with some very hard choices to make.
Local radiation to the tumor site to shrink it was done a year ago. There is some scaring from that, so more radiation is not an option. He could now have a colostomy bag to relieve the rectum of the irritation and also avoid the colon from rupturing if the tumor should grow anymore. After that they could work on shrinking the tumor, although they may not be able to reverse the colostomy. Just as big a problem is now the cancer that has traveled to his liver although the liver function tests turned out to be a lot better than Dr Vazquez expected.
With all of this you may wonder what good news there could be? Well, apart from his good liver function, his immune system has picked up and in the week and a half that we have been here he has put on almost 15 pounds. This is due to the TPN (total parenteral nutrition) that he is receiving here at Bio Care, along with food at the same time. The huge, almost 1 gallon bags of IV substances slow drip over 8 hours at a time every other day. Blood transfusions have brought his color and energy back and the success stories from some of the returning patients who had exhausted the main stream medicine of the United States and Canada and who had been told that there was “nothing left that we can do” by their Oncologists have given us renewed hope that he will beat this in the end.
Lennie on day 4.
On the terace.
- After one week.
I have told some of the other patients that this has taught us that getting over cancer is a
life changing path. We have experienced what can happen if you let yourself start to slip back. After all that we have done it seems that we are back to square one.
So my darling Lennie, it is with love and devotion that I wish you a happy birthday today and many more to come.
Lennie and I at Bio Care Hospital on day 4.
I love you Lennie Schneider,
Kathryn
www.kathrynsmith.com