Eventful week

We have been on the go since the last posting. We have also been enjoying the time we have had with just the four of us. Troy's work pulled together money so we could have a cleaning service for 5 visits!! They gave us our first one on Wednesday and it was wonderful to not have to worry about keeping my house clean. Thank you, again, to everyone involved in getting that together and donating toward the wonderful gift. Ryan was brought to an immediate care facility Wed. night because he bonked heads with Derek while climbing over the couch pillows that they set up on the living room floor. He got a pretty good nose bleed that concerned me and he had been running a fever since Tues. night due to a cold so I took him in. He's perfectly fine now. Troy took Thurs. & Fri. off so we could all hang out together. We had a playset installed in the back yard for the kids on Saturday and we went to Hillcrest Orchards and then Burt's Pumpkin Patch on Sunday. Both places were pretty close to one another and it was 70 degrees out (don't be too jealous those of you in the Northeast!). We left the house at 10am and the places were about an hour north from home. I was constantly reminded that we had to be home for the Giants game at 4:00. They never show the Giants games down here so it is a big event when it happens. Yesterday Troy visited his new dentist who he likes a lot. We have been on a long search for the right one and we finally visited one that Hal Mendel had recommended and Troy likes him A LOT - thanks, Hal! Today we saw Dr. Riley and he had good news for us. He could not find any evidence of a tumor anywhere so he is giving that report to Dr. Goldsweig (we meet with him Nov. 5th). Unfortunately he is also giving him a report that Troy is suffering some hearing loss in his left ear due to the chemo medicine. I have mentioned that he has had ringing in his ears since his first round of chemo and the doctors have been monitoring that. He is scheduled to see an audiologist tomorrow morning. We will take the absence of the tumor over some hearing loss any day. We wish there could just be 100% good news to report, but sometimes we have to take the bad with the good. Anyway, I will catch up with you again in the next few days and let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Improving and doing much better

Troy's condition has much improved to that of a week ago. He went to Dr. Goldsweig's today and didn't have to be hydrated - he went twice last week to get fluids in him. He will see Dr. Riley next week on the 28th so he can determine the status of the tumor on the base of his tongue and then both doctors will determine the next course of action (3rd round of chemo or radiation/chemo combination). Troy can't stand the thought of the 3rd round of chemo. He wants to get on with the radiation. The 3 chemo drugs together have really been knocking him on his hind end. The radiation will be in combination with just one chemo drug. The fact that it's one step closer to the end of treatment is what is psychologically appealing to Troy as well. We'll just wait and see and let you know what happens next week. I just want to let everyone know that Mark Bleibtrey wrote a comment on the last entry and it sums up what we are feeling about many of the comments that we have received from people we grew up with. Although I don't have a chance to reply to the comments that come in, I just want you to know how surprised and happy we are to have heard from all of you. Some of them have come from friends we have had over the past several years and some of them have come from concerned relatives that perhaps we have lost touch with and some have come from former colleagues. However, the ones that have struck us especially are those that have come from former friends/classmates from some nearly 20 years ago that grew up with us in Whitehall. For those of you that don't know about Whitehall, it is a small town in New York on the Vermont border situated between the Adirondack Mountains of NY and the Green Mountains of VT. It houses a few thousand people. I still subscribe to the Whitehall Times and keep up with the local happenings and I see children in the paper who are now around 18 years old and are the children of my very good friends when I was 18! It is very heartwarming to receive such nice comments from people who are thinking of us and from people where so much time has separated us from them. Please feel free to email us directly at soothcage@bellsouth.net or troy.brooks@ge.com any time you want to speak to us personally. We are so grateful to all of you who are concerned about how Troy is doing. We brought Troy's Aunt Connie back to the airport today and we are solo here for the next week. It's a good week to be alone as Troy is doing very well and it gives us time to be alone with the kids. Pumpkin picking sounds like a good idea for the weekend!

Mon Tues Wed - A few bad days

Monday Troy got his chemo bag taken off. He's had a hard few days since Saturday. He tested fine on Monday and didn't need to get hydrated but he was feeling queasy, weak, and pretty much horrible. He developed thrush and had to get another drug added to his arsenal of medications. The Physician's Assistant, Brandon, added another nausea drug as well. You need to be a megaphysicist in order to stay on top of drugs for an oncology patient. There have been a couple of drug blunders along the way where we have one more or one less pill than we should have of something. Tuesday Troy went back to get his $6000 Neulasta shot which puts his white blood cell count back in order. He continued to be feeling crappy - literally. He started having a pretty good case of diarrhea around 5:00 and it continued to the point that I had to call the doctor's office at 3 in the morning and then run out and pick him up Imodium right after the call. Troy will love that I'm letting you all know about his bowel movements! It's a good thing that he doesn't ever look at the blog. I do read the comments you post to him and thank you for all your nice remarks. I'm sorry that I don't get a chance to write to you all personally. I have so many of you on my mind to get in touch with, but running the house has taken up so much of my time. I will catch up with you when we get through this battle. Anyway, today was another day where Troy spent all day resting and trying to feel better. He is actually sitting next to me in the kitchen right now trying to eat a cheeseburger and can only get a quarter of the way through it. The doctor's office called this morning to have him come in for fluids because of his rough night. His mom took him there while I picked up his Aunt Connie (Donna's sister) at the airport. She came down to help us from Virginia for a week. Donna leaves on Saturday and comes back down with Ang on the 29th. My friend, Samantha, is also coming for a few days on the 29th. Derek got picked up from school today by our neighbor, Marian, (thanks, Marian!) and stayed there playing with Sam and Josh until we got back. Ryan went to the airport with me and I chased him around from one thing to another. It's been a busy day and I'm tired. Hopefully I will have some good news to report soon. Troy is really being tested right now. His physical and mental strength and his faith are all being beaten down. We just keep cheering him on and praying things will get easier for him... and they will eventually. Thanks for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. Oh, and thank you to Susan Ouellette, our realtor, who sent over her boys, Matt & Josh, to do lawn work for us today. And also to all the people involved at St. Catherine's of Siena church who have brought us over meals (or organized them). These gestures of kindness mean so much to us and make our lives so much easier right now.

Round 2 almost complete

Thursday we saw Dr. Goldsweig before we entered the chemo room. He told Troy that he should be very proud of himself due to how well he was doing. The fact that his weight was up and he was strong mentally and physically were all good signs. The doctor hasn't decided whether there will be a 3rd round or not at this point. We will have to have Dr. Riley check Troy out first. He has an appointment with him on the 28th. Troy had a bad night last night and we had to call after hours in order to get instructions for medications. He was very nauseated to the point of nearly vomiting. He still held back from doing so. He's feeling better this morning and he gets his pump off tomorrow afternoon. He may be heading to radiation soon if he doesn't get the 3rd round of chemo. We just have to wait for the doctor's orders. Speaking of the doctor, Dr. Goldsweig reads our blog so he told us that he's very careful with what he tells us because he knows it will be published! Hi Dr. G! This is a good opportunity for me to say nice things about him. He bought us lunch at Troy's first round of chemo (in fact he bought it for all the patients and staff in the chemo room that day). Thank you very much for that nice gesture and thank you for making Troy hate Steak 'n Shake now (I guess the meal you have during chemo, is generally the one you end up detesting for the rest of your life). That is one place on my list of not-so-favorites that Troy used to enjoy. I wish you would have brought in Waffle House take-out on this past round! But seriously, our apprehension and cynicism that we had in the beginning of this process has been lifted. We didn't know where to go or what to do when we were hit with Troy's diagnosis. Dr. Riley, who is very fatherly and fairly low key and we really liked and respected led us into the direction of Dr. Goldsweig. We met with him the following day at his office and he was high speed and quite the opposite of Dr. Riley. We weren't sure what to make of anything at that point and questioned everything. Dr. Goldsweig has brought us a lot of comfort and answered a lot of our questions over the past couple of months. He obtained a 2nd opinion from the Mayo Clinic on his own and called another doctor while we were at his office in order to confirm that his treatment route was the one to take. I'm sure he has done other things behind the scenes that we don't even know about. He and his staff are always cheerful despite what they deal with day in and day out and this rubs off well on the patients who are less than cheerful. We are in a great place and we just wanted to take this opportunity to thank him and his staff for taking care of Troy so well. As I said, Troy is heading back to his office tomorrow to have his pump removed and have his blood tested. We will catch up with you then.

Heading to Round 2

Tomorrow Troy will be getting his 2nd round of chemo. He went to the oncologist's office on Monday and his blood samples tested very normal. He didn't need any additives or anything. He is starting to lose his hair, but he has decided to shave it down to his scalp and looks rather handsome bald. Troy's weight is 4-5 pounds above normal and he is in fairly good spirits, but as you can imagine, he is not looking forward to tomorrow. Donna, the kids and I went to the Atlanta Zoo today in the rain. We had our umbrellas and raincoats and we were only one of about 4 groups at the zoo. There are 3 new cubs (4 months old) at the zoo and we all got a kick out of them - especially Ryan. We were under cover watching them through the glass so the trip was eventful despite the bad weather. We need rain here. It's been dry for a while in Georgia. Troy had a nice day to himself and was able to work in peace. I just asked him if he had a good day while we were gone and his reply was, "Very good!" I know we are really loved and missed when we aren't here!!! We will let you know how tomorrow goes.