Use What Exists

So glad to be able to get back to one of our favorite cabin camping spots with the scouts. Good food, song, stories, games and in the beautiful hills and woods of Westchester. Always a great place to relax by the wood-burning stove while a team of boys cooks and entertain. Tiring but in many ways invigorating as well. Thanks to the boys for a wonderful weekend!

Now we gear up for another consult before the next biopsy to determine the course of treatment. At this point, all signs are leading everyone to believe that it’s a lymphoma again. If one could say that a cancer is a preferable type, this would be the one to want. Hoping to have some answers within the next couple of weeks. If anyone knows of a good acupuncturist, please let us know. Looking for some alternate methods of pain management and acupuncture is highly recommended in a lot of forums.

Edit: Thanks to all who private messaged us info on acupuncturists. Fingers crossed we can get pain relief results that others report for these circumstances.

We’ve been joking with our kids that everything on TV is solved in 43 minutes and there are results before the first commercial break. Ah… if only life were like a TV show! The pathology report is inconclusive but is leaning towards lymphoma. So more tests are on the horizon and the waiting game continues. Hence the frustrations. Now we’re waiting to hear back from our oncologist as to which direction to go next. If it is lymphoma, we hope that there are enough cells for them to use to create a vaccine. This science existed ten years ago but fortunately/unfortunately there were not enough of Rich’s cells to develop the vaccine. This time, we’re hoping that they have improved the process and that whatever they get will be enough. Now that would be worthy of TV!

We’ll soon be coming up on one week since the biopsy that will let us know the direction Rich’s treatment will take. The doctors are sure it’s a malignancy but not what type or stage. Waiting…and not knowing…it’s always the worst.

Later Edit: We realized that for some folks, this is kind of coming in to the middle (or early middle) of our story. Rich was treated for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2003-2004. As far as we knew, he was coming up on 10 years of remission. And we were looking forward to celebrating that anniversary in April 2014. We also had (have) so many wonderful family moments to celebrate this Spring… in May Nick graduates from Cooper Union, in June is Richard and Noelle’s wedding but first was our daughter giving birth for the second time at the end of January. When we came back from Rochester after welcoming into the world Mark (our Bean) and spending a wonderful week with Jake (our Boober), Rich said that he was always waking up feeling tired and was going to see the doctor. That first visit to our PCP was on February 25th and we’ve been on a remarkable roller coaster ride ever since! The blood work showed a severely low iron count which generally indicates internal bleeding. Thank heavens the doctor also took Rich’s medical history into account and sent us to a gastroenterology/colorectal group who set up first a CT scan on March 4th and then an endoscopy/colonoscopy on March 12th. Both showed lymphatic activity where there should be none and a very suspicious mass in his stomach that we likened to the singing/dancing alien in Spaceballs. From then on, it’s been a strange and yet familiar journey of hurry up and wait!