It’s been awhile since I submitted to a biopsy….much less a dual procedure.

I had to do them as we’re just a couple of days from the 2-month mark…and short of this approach; I wasn’t going to have an answer on where…or where I didn’t have cancer present. 

My only recourse would have been either to go along with them idly….or hold my ground with the watch and wait routine….and hoped things got big enough inside of me to be readily identifiable. 

We’ve had a failed MRI attempt…..2 other successful MRI’s performed on spine and liver….a  full CT done….a PET done….met with 4 doctors…and finally 2 biopsies on the liver and the pleura of the lung.

And still….we don’t know exactly what we’re looking at…

Pathology is still out on the tissue samples that were taken…

I got through the liver okay…the liver doesn’t feel pain as much.

When they rolled me over to do my pleura….different story…and oh man…the incredible pain. 

Apparently, they had to go through my pleura in 2 different places and had to go in from the far side of my lung.  I’ll just say that we ‘feel’ pain in the lungs, especially the pleural area…the nerves are pretty hot right there, I can assure you.

They probably went in a ½ dozen times at least….about 2/3 of the way in, my chest started filling up with congestion…..it just began a constant filling up feeling….in the end, I was spitting up quite a bit of volume of blood. 

I could barely breathe….and my lung was filling up….and I had to expel….and they kept telling me to ‘hold my breath.’  And then they’d snap that instrument….and then the intense pain…..and then keep holding your breath.

Then breathe….

Then right in again….

I said I’m bleeding here, but that didn’t seem to matter….found out they gave me only lidocain at the injection site…..not the Versed and Fentanyl they had promised.  I know they needed to keep me awake to hold my breath, so I wasn’t sure why they had mentioned I would be administered that.

So, no wonder it smarted so good…

The bleeding eventually clotted and they held me 3 hours with a couple of x-rays to make sure things looked sealed…

I developed a low-grade fever 98.0-99.0 shortly after I got home….and with the Texas heat well over 105 in the shade, I was cold inside and slightly convulsing….I spent alot of time under a blanket on the couch and the covers on the bed just shaking and shivering....

This alternated between episodes of sweating and overheating….and kept me in bed Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and a good deal of Monday…..missing several days of work. 

And one of my front teeth started giving me past trouble at just this same inopportune time…the tooth is stable but the gum around it can get infected with food particles periodically and the tooth unseats and floats upwards slightly leaving the root slightly exposed and when it acts up……you forget completely about cancer.

It makes you just want to rip it out of your head….generally what has worked was an anti-biotic with a clinical mouth rinse…..but this time it was not working…..so I got hold of him and we’re trying one of the heavy-duty “Miacyns” now.

So, I haven’t been able to eat or drink much the past week or so….but appetite has been down for a couple of months anyway.  

Oh $hit….this just in….

Just got a call from the rad onc…..

It’s metastatic adeocarcinoma to the liver…..and as I strongly suspected….to the pleura of the right lung.

Wanna’ know the kicker?

The current theory is that the lung cancer “survived” the brutal radiation treatments….he said the beam field he used was huge….the size of my fist.

Anyway, he thinks that the lung cancer grew through the diaphragm and migrated back over to the liver that way.

That’s a plausible theory and certainly makes some sense to me.  After all, it’s been 5 ½ years since cancer was originally in my liver….and it had stayed away too….as all of my latter battles have been in the lung.

That certainly explains things…

He’s disappointed that his rad treatment didn’t work…..I was shocked, but I guess I was just naïve to believe that cancer could grow, much less gain ground on an area that had been so heavily radiated and operated upon. 

I told the doc I didn’t think anything could ‘grow’ from a radiation field. 

Just goes to show you that even after 9-years, there are still many things to learn... 

My other hospital lost my Cyberknife records, so we don’t have anything from that to base anything on….so the rad onc wants to consult with the liver guy and make the rounds with the other docs to be able to present me with something. 

I guess from 2-months of hard fighting (guess I ended up stepping into battle sideways), all we can say now is that there is cancer in 2 places…and it turned up negative in the spine.

Hopefully, a plan will unfold after they all consult with one another…..a couple of more days to come up with a consensus is what I hope to walk away with this week.

And then we can figure out the next step….

Hopefully, this gum/tooth issue will subside within another week or so….and I’ll be able to think more clearly…..tooth/gum pain really clouds a person’s vision. 

Not a great report…..but at least we know that cancer is present in the pleura….knew I wasn’t hurting that bad for nothing.  Nice to know that I'm not crazy. 

-Craig