Begining

On Our Way

Here are a few pictures of our first stop in Edmonton. I feel like I should go back to the post about the hockey and put the pictures there but then nobody would see them. Maybe later I will move them to where they belong.

Form, forms and then some more forms just in case we maybe figured that we had not filled in enough forms. Reading and some more reading but just do it in small bites. Itinerary for tomorrow:

10:15- Meet with finance rep.
10:45- EKG
11:15- Nutrition evaluation
12:00- Radiology for chest
1:00- Social Work assessment
2:00- Conference with our oncologist and hand in consent forms

At least Friday looks a little less busy.

Hang On To Your Hats

We are home. We had a nice trip. The roads were good on the way home. We caught colds. John is sleeping. I feel better today than I did last night. Last night I had the blankets piled on, a hot water bottle in bed with me and I still could not get warm and I ached all over. So far John seems to be weathering this cold O.K. I hope that continues. Sam and Ben are sick today. Poor guys.

John went to his appointment at the cancer center today. He is doing good. We did have a bit of a bomb dropped on us today. Because his Multiple myeloma is high risk to recur Dr. V. has decided the best route to take at this point is to do a donor transplant. Hang on to your hats folks. All you siblings out there are going to be notified and will be tested to see who is a match. If there is a match the transplant will take place in Seattle in approximately half a year at the at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. They don't like to wait until the cancer recurs before doing this. Even though they do transplants in Calgary apparently they are not taking any new cases there at this time.

We will have a lot of things to organize for this. We need to get passports just in case we have to fly and cannot drive there. I need to get my permanent resident card so I can get back into the country. My citizenship application will take at least a year to process. I have to get an American passport so we will get to work on all of that ASAP!

We will have to live in Seattle for about three months so we will have to rent. I went on line today and figure that it will cost about 1200 to 1400 dollars a month for rent. Pray that I can get in a lot of extra hours of work this summer.

We may have to make more than one trip to Seattle. I am hoping that we will be able to avoid this scenario but sometimes they have you come in to consult then go home then come back for the transplant. I feel numb. Somehow we will get through all of this.

Going But Not Gone

Johns pic-line had to be pulled late this afternoon. It clogged up. It doesn't get to stay gone. It goes back in first thing in the morning. They are still pumping too many things into him for that. I don't think that I could list everything that they are pumping in but I will try: Platelets, lactose with antiviral drugs, antibiotics, imunoglobulins, Lysecs (the spelling here as well as other medical words are suspect) Then they come along to take things out. Today they took a couple bottles of blood from his body. They are going to see what they can grow out of all that too make sure nothing is growing anywhere in his body. The fever was a little down this evening.

We learned more about his back pain and what is going on with that. THE TEAM: Dr. F., Dr. M., Dr. I., Joline the pharmacist, Rene the social worker all came along this morning (I kid you not they all travel together from patient to patient!) LOL. Anyway, Dr. F. explained that as the cancer dies in Johns back it leaves holes so his spine collapses. He said that John will become even shorter yet. They can't do anything about this at this time but when all the treatment is finished they will have an ortho-guy see him and get things fixed up. They can do things to get the bones to harden up as well as perhaps do some surgery and glue places up if it is needed. Anyway we all think that John is cute and we will love him just as much short. It is fun to hug him when you can stare him right in the eyes and kiss him on the nose. I don't recommend that everybody try this! LOL

This evening I went to Venice House and got some good eats. We can pretend that we went out for supper. There is even enough for tomorrow so I don't have to pack lunch. Well, I have rambled enough. Please pray that his spine does not crumble any more and that he doesn't get infection especially when they put the new pic-line in. Thanks guys...we love ya.

No Chemo Today

We just say Dr. M. a few minutes ago and he was able to update us specifically as to what is going to happen next. They want to assess John a little more before they proceed. They need to take a chest X-ray because he is quite phlegmy. They are going to have a respiratory Dr. see him and follow what this person recommends as far as his chest goes. They got the full body X-rays back and said that they want to do a MRI focusing on the upper spine because there is some anomaly there they want to look at. It sort of looks like it has grown together or something. The MRI won't be today. They will fit that in whenever they can get him in there. He explained the swelling of his legs: it is a combination of everything. The Dex. causes swelling, poor kidney functions add in their bit, less activity, the Myeloma ect. They don't seem overly concerned. They also pulled the water pill because he lost I think 6 kilos which seems high. They don't want him dehydrated either. They should be moving him this afternoon to 6100. As I came down the hall there was an empty room. The room is just waiting for housekeeping. It has a window sooo...I hope that is for John.