“They are waiting for us; I told them we would be a little late.”, said Dr Alvarez as he drove us to the MRI centre, speeding through the Mexican streets.\u00a0 Once there I stayed in the room with Lennie as the machine buzzed, clunked and hammered, creating the slices of images that would show his bowels and what the cancer was currently doing.\u00a0 This time it was just his lower abdomen, so it only took about 40 minutes, unlike the almost 2 1\/2 hours of the previous MRI over 3 months ago.\u00a0 During that scan I had stayed with Lennie also, standing at the end of the cylinder where his head crowned at the opening.\u00a0 Standing there talking to him when the machine was not making its sounds, my hand resting on the very top of his head so that he knew I was there.\u00a0 At the end of that 2 1\/2 hour scan I had gone around to help him up when something shiny whizzed past my face.\u00a0 It was one of my large hoop earrings that I had forgotten to remove.\u00a0 The strong magnets pulling it out of my ear so fast that I hadn’t even felt it.\u00a0 This time I was much more careful to remove every bit of metal that I had on.<\/p>\n
Today we saw the scan and every bit of metastasis was gone from his lower abdomen, reaffirming what the Thermal Image Scan had already told us.\u00a0 Only 2 lymph nodes showed up with the largest measuring 1 cm.\u00a0 Since the clinics in Mexico do not keep your medical records we had no previous MRI images to compare this with and the radiologist had not sent in any other measurements.\u00a0 We can’t tell whether the main tumor is larger or smaller so are now waiting for him to take measurements.<\/p>\n
When Lennie arrived here a week ago he had another CEA tumor marker blood test done even though he had just had one less than 3 weeks prior up in Canada.\u00a0 At that time it was 20.7.\u00a0 The new one read 27.0.\u00a0 What?!\u00a0 How could it have gone up over 6 points in such a short time.\u00a0 Today we had another one taken as the numbers seem too similar with just a decimal point in between.\u00a0 I am hoping that they were wrong and that his marker has come down to under 20.\u00a0 These are the times when you think about ‘human error’ and how ‘it’ happens.\u00a0 We will get these results tomorrow.\u00a0 In Canada we waited 16 days for the lab results to come in.<\/p>\n
We are back at the beautiful Hotel Lucerna on Paseo de Los Heroes in Tijuana.\u00a0 The weather is cold (frios<\/em> they say), going down to the low 40s F at night with the days only getting up to about 65 F.\u00a0 Lennie\u00a0taunted me for packing a cube ceramic heater in my luggage.\u00a0 He stopped when the temperature went down to 33 F one night.\u00a0 He had the front desk send up a portable heater which they don’t offer, but have on hand for the guests that think to ask.\u00a0 The funny thing is that everyone here thinks that I must be use to the cold because I come from Canada.\u00a0 I tell them that I live indoors and my place is a lot warmer than theirs since they do not have central heating and we do.\u00a0 Everywhere we go we have tea or soup, trying to stay warm.\u00a0 Today heaters were brought into the clinic for the patients who are so cold with their weakened systems.\u00a0 As I sat with Lennie, back in the Hyperthermia Chamber I pressed my hands on the side, and closing my eyes imagined that the two of us were back in Hawai’i with the sun beating down.\u00a0 I started to dream and weave a story out of my imagination and our life, telling it to Lennie to keep his mind off how hot and feverish he was becoming in the chamber.\u00a0 He managed to handle his temperature raised to 105 yesterday before starting to become anxious and wanting to get out of it.\u00a0 An hour and a half had passed and it had done its job.\u00a0<\/p>\n His energy level has come up quite a bit since Christmas and most days his color is good.\u00a0 Tomorrow we will have a better idea of how everything inside is looking and how long we will be here in Mexico.<\/p>\n