Better few days

Troy has been much more lively over the last few days. He has color back in his cheeks and he has been eating and maintaining his weight. He has had no hair loss, but his ears are still bothering him. His mood has shifted and we aren't walking on eggshells as much as we were when I last wrote. He wanted to do some yard work this past weekend but his mother and I wouldn't let him. He needs to take it easy so he doesn't get so worn out. He is still a little fatigued, but doing really, really well from what I expected him to be. We went to Dr. Goldsweig's today for a follow up visit and he was really optimistic about Troy's prognosis. I hate to name percentages, but he said that he had an 85% or better chance at curing his cancer. He met with other doctors to review Troy's case at the hospital and they have definitely confirmed his diagnosis as oropharyngeal squamois cell carcinoma stage 4A. He just reiterated how much better this diagnosis is than the prior nasopharyngeal stage 2 because of the prognosis. He stated that the former prognosis was at 46%. This really uplifted Troy today. He has been working hard at eating and hydrating himself and it really shows. We don't have another appointment until Tuesday. Dr. G's office will just be taking blood samples before his 2nd round of chemo which is on 10/9. We'll let you know how things are going again soon. It may not be until next week before you hear from me again.

Last few days

Tuesday was another bad day. Troy really had a lot of ringing in his ears and really didn't even want us around because it's pretty hard to stop a 4 year old and 14 month old from making noise. He went to Dr. Goldsweig's and he loaded him up with fluids. He wasn't surprised that he was dehydrated because he said that everyone on that regimen of chemo has to be hydrated. He also had neulasta injected into him in order to increase his white blood cells since they were destroyed with the chemo treatment. Troy had to hang around in the chemo room and Donna stayed with him and drove him home afterward. Wednesday was a better day because Troy felt like eating as soon as he woke up. We went to the Waffle House. For those of you up North, there is a Waffle House about every 10 feet here in Georgia and it is Troy's favorite place to eat and my least favorite because it is the most fattening food I have ever tasted for breakfast. If it doesn't have grease or fat in it, you will not find it on the menu at the Waffle House. Oh, excuse me, they do have coffee, juice, and milk. Anyway, I was all for it because he can get about 1000 calories in him in one sitting. He had his ears evaluated in the afternoon by Dr. Riley and everything seems to be fine, but they are going to keep evaluating the situation to make sure that the Cisplatin isn't causing any damage to his hearing. Troy has been a little testy lately - actually a lot testy - but I can't blame him. He has a lot of changes going on with his body right now. Today he had his medications changed for sleep and anxiety because he is not getting real good sleep. I am actually going to sleep on the couch tonight so he can hopefully get a really good night's sleep. Gus, if you read this, I'm really sorry that Troy or I haven't gotten back to you. The days have been real busy with the kids. We have a busy day planned tomorrow as well, but I will try and get Troy to call you or I will call you myself. He has been real grumpy the last few days and has barely wanted to talk to us! He has been avoiding the phone (and like I said before, us/the kids) because it bothers his ears. Ryan was being real whiny this morning and you would have thought that cannon balls were hitting the house the way he was carrying on!!

Chemo removed

Today we went to the gastroenterologist's office to have him adjust Troy's feeding tube. He didn't sleep well last night because it was giving him a lot of discomfort because it was too tight. We also went to the oncologist's office to have his pump removed. Now one round of chemo is complete. Troy is very very tired and sick of the whole process already. He is trying to keep hydrated and fed like he is supposed to but he is having a hard time pushing his body to do the things he should. I can't understand the way he feels and my wanting to push him comes across as nagging. We need a full time nurse here to kick him into shape! Since that is not a reality, he will just have to put up with the nagging. Anyway, he's knocked out on Lunesta right now and will be seeing the oncologist tomorrow. He has some ringing in his ears from the Cisplatin that needs to be checked out. It's just another possible side effect of the medicine. I'm going to stay home with the kids tomorrow and Donna is going to drive him to his appointment tomorrow morning. Derek had a real hard time when we left this afternoon. It was enough to make us feel bad for the whole time. He forgot about it 5 minutes after we left. Isn't that always the way it goes?

One day closer to the end of treatment

Troy did really well at the oncologist's office yesterday. We were there from 9-5. It was a long day. He played his PSP games and we had fun talking to this other couple who had just started chemo treatment the day before. The man had lung cancer. He was quite a hoot and kept Troy's spirits up with his sense of humor. I think today it is definitely hitting him. He has been pretty nauseous and unable to eat and he is sound asleep now. There has been no vomiting. They pumped him with around 10 bags of medications and a lot of it was to prevent the vomiting. He has a take home pump of chemo medicine that will be removed on Monday. The kids and I went to the gymnastics center down the road this morning while Donna took care of anything that Troy needed. We have been trying to just let him rest upstairs, but we don't want him to be confined to his bed so we're going to try and get him downstairs some more. I'll let you know how the days progress. Thanks for the prayers and for thinking of us.

Chemo tomorrow

We are heading to the oncologist tomorrow morning for the chemo to start. As you can imagine, Troy is not thrilled, but the way I see it is that we are one day closer to this being over. We met Marcy & Hal on Saturday and they are just a very warm couple who is more than willing to be there for us through our ordeal. They understand every emotion we are going through and they plan on helping us get through this. Hal has even offered to go to Troy's treatments with him. Anyway, we are very grateful for our accidental meeting with them. Ryan hurt his leg today and I had to bring him to the doctor because he was limping around. He seems better now. Derek thought it would be a wonderful idea to give him a leg tackle! We went to the general surgeon's office yesterday for a follow-up to Troy's port surgery. Everything is fine there. He is healing pretty well from his PEG tube and I think he is even starting to get used to the fact that it is there. The nutritionist at the oncologist's office even gave us a case of food to try out. I told Troy that I was just going to mash up some food and syringe it in there! At least we can still laugh about all that is going on!! Donna & Ang bought Troy a PlayStation portable video game player so he will have some entertainment while he is sitting around receiving his chemo. The room he goes in to receive his treatments has a whole line up of leather lazy-boy chairs and every person receiving chemo for the day shares the room and shares their sad stories. Troy is planning on putting his ear plugs in so he can play Madden football and Medal of Honor. I don't think he will be trading stories! We'll let you know how he makes out. Talk to everyone later!!

School Fundraiser

Okay, this has nothing to do with Troy's progress, but Derek is doing his first preschool fundraiser. If you have any interest in Tupperware, here is the link. You can pay with check, cash, or credit card. They can ship direct to you for a charge of $5.90. Just email me if you have any questions. I have a feeling we won't really have a chance to go door-to-door selling this, so just let us know if you are interested in purchasing anything. Thanks!! Terry & Derek

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=33693&l=e4a92&id=630303146

Angels

We received news the other day that the Mayo Clinic is in agreement with our doctor's findings. Troy will begin his chemo treatment this Thursday. He hates his feeding tube. He obviously doesn't have to use it at this point, but just having the tube out of his belly is driving him crazy. Donna is here now. She has been here since Tuesday. Some of the pressure with the kids has been alleviated. Derek has been having 4 year old moments here and there which contributes to my 40 year old moments and Ryan seems to cry when Derek is upset, so at times I feel like I will have a mental breakdown or anxiety attack, but so far I haven't completely lost it. Troy is just trying to stay even keeled and is doing a pretty good job of it. One doctor wants him to eat 2000-2300 calories per day and the other doctor doesn't want him to stuff himself for the next couple of weeks, so we have to deal with that conflict of wanting to fatten Troy up and at the same time not wanting him to be sick from his surgery. We live and breathe questions about his cancer and wonder if we are making the right decisions (probably me much more than Troy). I guess this is all supposed to be "normal". Anyway, everyone is sleeping, but all I do is worry but try and stay positive. At least Troy is getting rest like he should and that makes me happy. We are actually meeting with a couple (Hal & Marcy Mendel) today who have been through this same type of cancer over the past year or so. It's a long story how me met, but it was completely by accident. God just throws you angels sometimes.

PEG tube installed

Troy had his feeding tube installed this afternoon. He is sore but getting around pretty good. He is miserable because he's starving and his diet is limited to broth, jello, and juice. The MRI results have only confirmed what we already knew from the PET scan. Dr. Allen ordered the MRI just so it can be a guide for her to use in placing the radiation to the affected areas. We have a follow up appointment with the gastroenterologist on Friday.

P.S. Troy's star is very lonely. It looks like I am the only one that donated and put a message out on it. Remember, it's only a $1 minimum donation - see 2 postings back for the link to it. Thanks!

Heading to the Gastroenterologist

We will be going to Dr. Neal Osborn tomorrow for Troy's consultation for his feeding tube. His surgery will more than likely be on Wednesday. They were going to start Troy's chemo on Wednesday, but due to the conflict with the feeding tube, they are going to start him next week instead. This will be good because it will give him time to recover from his surgery. This is the third surgery (if you haven't been following along) in less than a month. Troy's hanging tough though. We started out the weekend kind of sluggish, but Troy talked to the radiation oncologist, Dr. Laura Allen, Saturday morning and she gave us a little more confidence in Troy's prognosis. She basically said that she believes that Troy was misdiagnosed from the beginning by the pathologist and they are pretty confident that they have a handle on what they are dealing with, and they have sent the slides and his information to the round table at the Mayo clinic just so they can all agree on their findings. Anyway, I don't think we will ever feel "good" about any news until they say that Troy is cured. Every time we receive good news, we still know that the battle is not over. However, we are in the fight, and will continue until we win.

SU2C

If you don't already know there is a 1 hour commercial free show on tomorrow night on all 3 networks at 8:00 called Stand Up To Cancer. A lot of people have asked us that if there is anything they can do, to let them know. I actually added a star to the constellation at the show's website in Troy's name (go to http://su2c.standup2cancer.org/constellation). You can search the constellation for his name (I did it under Troy and not Angelo) and make a donation as little as $1 or more if you want. You can then place any comments that you want under Troy's star. You can also launch a star for someone else who you know that has been diagnosed with cancer. We have plenty of food that has been organized for us. We have a great support network that has been formed. What we don't have is a cure for this horrible disease. Keep praying for us and give whatever you can to the doctors and scientists at SU2C so they can help develop cures for all different types of cancers that are out there. This is for the hope that none of you ever has to deal with this in your family. Please pass along the link to anyone you can think of. We have the MRI appointment today at 1:00. There won't be anything to report until probably tomorrow or Monday regarding the results.

Great News

We were at the doctor's office all morning. The great news is that the PET scan showed no sign of cancer anywhere else in Troy's body. As you can imagine we were overjoyed. The oncologist has officially renamed Troy's cancer as orapharyngeal. He said this is good news as well due to the prognosis being better. They are now sending his slides to the Mayo Clinic to review amongst other doctors/pathologists. Troy should be starting his first dose of chemo next week (Wednesday) unless they come up with something different between now and then. Fortunately, Donna (Troy's mom) will be coming on Tuesday.

Pathologist slides

The only news to report today is that we heard from Jacqui, the lady who is collecting our doctor reports and any other medical data to send to eCleveland Clinic for a free (pd for by GE) online 2nd opinion. She said that the pathologist, Dr. John Cochran ("If the tumor doesn't fit, you must acquit" - Troy will think I am the biggest dork for typing this!), called her personally to ask her to send the slides of Troy's tumor results back to him as soon as possible. We couldn't figure out what all this was about so we put a call into the ENT surgeon, Dr. Earnest Riley, and the oncologist's nurse, Karen, called us before we got a call back from Dr. Riley. She said the reason for the urgency with getting the slides back was because they were already working on a second opinion from Emory University and they wanted the slides ASAP so they could get Troy going with the best course of treatment. We like the fact that the doctors are collaborating amongst each other to give the best care to Troy. I guess we will know more tomorrow when we meet with the oncologist, Dr. Bruce Goldsweig.