Stay the course

Yesterday continued to be interesting. Nick was on a couple of different antibiotics, but his temp jumped up to 104.2. Dr. Le personally checked in on Nick (obviously came in from home) - I'm really trying to like him. He, along with Dr. M decided to switch things up a bit with some different antibiotics and Nick's temp stayed at about 101 through the night. His pain has subsided and his white counts are hovering around 21, which is pretty high.

This morning, Dr. Le came in and when I asked questions about his current lab results (I had a copy in my hand), he asked me in an interesting tone, "Who gave you that?" I responded that I get a copy every morning. He said, "Every morning?" I said, "Yup". Idiot. But then he did take the time to discuss his counts, line by line, and I'm happy and it makes sense.

He came in again with Dr. M who has such a different, more personable demeanor. He really doesn't know what to do - they' can't figure out where Nick's infection is coming from. The cultures are still all negative and it's been over 48 hours. Only conclusion is that it is from his port but they want to wait a little longer for the antibiotics to work before pulling it.

We did, however, discuss more of Nick's pathology results. I rec'd an addendum to the original report stating that 1 out of the 8 lymph nodes retrieved is cancerous. Although not in either path report, Dr. M stated the tumor had permeated the pancreas near the tail and there is no way to get clean margins and we don't know if there are cancerous cells left internally. We're hoping the 1 lymph node is the one that was near the pancreas. Another disappointing note is that there was no necrosis found in the tumor meaning the tumor was alive and well. The reality of this is overwhelming, however, we remember that Nick has only had 4 rounds of chemo to attack this tumor, using the same chemo protocol as last time, and he may have built up a resistance. I know they plan on using a different concoction of chemos around the first of September and Nick should respond favorably. Dr. M will be sending Dr. Albritton an email today updating her. We will change our appointment to a conference call on Wednesday and get a plan established.

Nick just hurled and that may be enough info for the dr's to pull his port, although his temp dropped to 100. More later.

Lori