MRI
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Tiffany Chen
May 18, 2009, 9:45:24 PM5/18/09
to ipray4anderson
Hi all,
I was debating whether or not to send another update today or tomorrow but I thought that it couldn't hurt to send one today AND tomorrow.
We woke up this morning with a message on Anderson's phone telling us that Anderson's radiation oncologist had scheduled Anderson for an MRI this afternoon. This was a little bit of a surprise because he had originally bumped it up to 5/27 and we were going to wait for that date, but... well... today works as well. Anderson's oncologist's nurse called us on Friday and left a barely audible message telling us that we shouldn't get an MRI too close to the end of radiation because sometimes you can't see anything. So yes. We were a little surprised that there was an MRI scheduled for today.
The blood draw was scheduled for 1pm and the MRI check in at 4:30 for a 5pm MRI. We got there at 1pm and they were able to squeeze us in early. We were out of there by... about 3 something... I think. Another huge blessing... free valet parking at the outpatient MRI site. SWEET! Valet is $15 at the main hospital and can be $20 at the radiation treatment center so free is pretty awesome.
It all happened kind of fast that we barely had time to think before it happened. On the super short car ride to the outpatient radiology place, we were able to talk a little bit and we both agreed that we're going to be OK no matter what happens. At this point, we're not sure if anything could surprise us more than the 3cm tumor that surprised us last March, but we're still hoping for a clean MRI.
Even though the MRI's already done, we'd still like prayer to prepare us for the doc's appointment tomorrow morning.
Another thing that's concerning Anderson is that he has a pain between his shoulder blades. He has a very difficult time explaining what kind of pain it is to me despite the 20 questions that all nurses are trained to ask when a patient says they have pain. He might have done some exercises and maybe pulled a muscle there but I wasn't paying attn when he was doing his exercises so I'm not sure if he did work out that area that much... or our worst nightmare could be that he has another tumor on his spinal cord.
We'll just have to wait and see how it goes. I'm hoping that tomorrow, the MRI will be clean and his back will stop hurting.
Please hope and pray with us.
TTYtomorrow...
<3,
Tiff & Anderson
The attached pic is of Anderson ringing the bell. You get to ring the bell when you're done with treatment. :)
I was debating whether or not to send another update today or tomorrow but I thought that it couldn't hurt to send one today AND tomorrow.
We woke up this morning with a message on Anderson's phone telling us that Anderson's radiation oncologist had scheduled Anderson for an MRI this afternoon. This was a little bit of a surprise because he had originally bumped it up to 5/27 and we were going to wait for that date, but... well... today works as well. Anderson's oncologist's nurse called us on Friday and left a barely audible message telling us that we shouldn't get an MRI too close to the end of radiation because sometimes you can't see anything. So yes. We were a little surprised that there was an MRI scheduled for today.
The blood draw was scheduled for 1pm and the MRI check in at 4:30 for a 5pm MRI. We got there at 1pm and they were able to squeeze us in early. We were out of there by... about 3 something... I think. Another huge blessing... free valet parking at the outpatient MRI site. SWEET! Valet is $15 at the main hospital and can be $20 at the radiation treatment center so free is pretty awesome.
It all happened kind of fast that we barely had time to think before it happened. On the super short car ride to the outpatient radiology place, we were able to talk a little bit and we both agreed that we're going to be OK no matter what happens. At this point, we're not sure if anything could surprise us more than the 3cm tumor that surprised us last March, but we're still hoping for a clean MRI.
Even though the MRI's already done, we'd still like prayer to prepare us for the doc's appointment tomorrow morning.
Another thing that's concerning Anderson is that he has a pain between his shoulder blades. He has a very difficult time explaining what kind of pain it is to me despite the 20 questions that all nurses are trained to ask when a patient says they have pain. He might have done some exercises and maybe pulled a muscle there but I wasn't paying attn when he was doing his exercises so I'm not sure if he did work out that area that much... or our worst nightmare could be that he has another tumor on his spinal cord.
We'll just have to wait and see how it goes. I'm hoping that tomorrow, the MRI will be clean and his back will stop hurting.
Please hope and pray with us.
TTYtomorrow...
<3,
Tiff & Anderson
The attached pic is of Anderson ringing the bell. You get to ring the bell when you're done with treatment. :)
Tiffany Chen
May 19, 2009, 1:47:33 PM5/19/09
to ipray4anderson
Hi everyone,
Well... we're done with the appointment and here are the major points from the radiation oncologist. There's some good news and some... ok news. Here are the main points:
Anderson's main fears are going into surgery again and coming out with more deficits and also he really hates the recovery. It's not going to be an easy decision but it's one that we're going to have to make pretty soon.
SO... we might be here a little longer than we had planned on... once again. I can't believe that our 10 day trip to Houston became a 3 month one which might become a 6 month one.
The both of us had our cry and our cry out to God this morning. We go through periods of time where we wish that we had "normal" lives and struggled with what everyone else our age struggles with... like finding a job, buying a house... fighting with their gf/bf over who didn't call who and when... but in the end, this is our lot in life and we are thankful that we don't need to worry about the things that other people worry about. We have been blessed IMMENSELY by everyone and their generosity with care packages, with their words, their time and their love. Sad to say but I think that our church body really shines during a crisis and I'm glad that we were able to bring things out in people that wouldn't have come out normally (i.e. our miracle wedding and the unity and teamwork we witnessed, the prayer chains... and people saying such encouraging words to us that they normally probably would have kept to themselves, etc.).
The past few days, I've had this verse in my mind... every good and perfect gift comes from above (James 1:17)... and another one from 1 Corinthians that says "what do you have that you did not receive?". Our life, our love, our marriage, our friends and family... are all gifts. We did nothing to earn it and we're not going to hang on so tightly as if we did earn it. We mourn some things that didn't turn out the way we would have liked but we're both trying, by God's grace, to keep things in an eternal perspective and still try to honor God in all that we do.
It's a pretty nice day today so we're going to go out for a bit. Just thought I'd send out an update before we left the house.
Please be in prayer for our decision on whether or not to do the surgery, for the swelling/necrosis to resolve on its own miraculously, and for peace for both of us. And for the doctors to have wisdom and discernment as well.
Love you all,
Tiff (& Anderson)
Well... we're done with the appointment and here are the major points from the radiation oncologist. There's some good news and some... ok news. Here are the main points:
- The frontal lobe area looks excellent. I'm not sure what excellent is but... that is definitely good news.
- The cerebellar area most likely has some necrosis (or dead tissue) left over from the laser therapy... the necrosis is causing some swelling which is causing Anderson some discomfort, the cause of his come-and-go headaches, and probably the reason why he's having more instability. He may have to up his steroids. He's only on 1mg right now but the doc recommends him to go back to 2mg and possibly 4-8mg a day...if he keeps having headaches. Steroid treatment would normally be the way to go and just wait for months until the necrosis clears on its own... the only thing is that...
- A major problem that he sees is that the swelling from the cerebellar area is that it's causing some hydrocephalus. The swelling is blocking the drainage of the spinal fluid and causing an accumulation in his ventricles. The main risk they foresee is that the increased pressure could cause his brain to expand, be pushed against the skull (very painful and possibly irreversibly damaging) and worst case scenario be pushed out of the base of his skull. OK it sounds horrendous and it IS life threatening if it does happen. I can't believe I forgot the technical term for that but it's bad bad news... thus...
- We are meeting with the neurosurgeon next Tuesday morning to discuss further and we'll also take this week to pray and ask for wisdom and direction. It's not very serious yet, but we should probably do something soon. Our options are:
- Take the high dose steroids and see if it resolves on its own. It may take a long time to resolve and the increased pressure may cause those horrendous side effects that I mentioned in point #3.
- Another craniotomy where the neurosurgeon opens up his skull and "sucks" out the necrotic tissue. The rad-onc said that this type of tissue is "suckable" (I seriously don't know if that's the technical term but that's what he said) so they can vacuum it out fairly easily and if he sees any tumor, he can also take that out the old-fashioned "unsuckable" way which is to cut it out. If it weren't such a serious matter, I might have had a chuckle at his suckable vs. unsuckable surgery description.
Anderson's main fears are going into surgery again and coming out with more deficits and also he really hates the recovery. It's not going to be an easy decision but it's one that we're going to have to make pretty soon.
SO... we might be here a little longer than we had planned on... once again. I can't believe that our 10 day trip to Houston became a 3 month one which might become a 6 month one.
The both of us had our cry and our cry out to God this morning. We go through periods of time where we wish that we had "normal" lives and struggled with what everyone else our age struggles with... like finding a job, buying a house... fighting with their gf/bf over who didn't call who and when... but in the end, this is our lot in life and we are thankful that we don't need to worry about the things that other people worry about. We have been blessed IMMENSELY by everyone and their generosity with care packages, with their words, their time and their love. Sad to say but I think that our church body really shines during a crisis and I'm glad that we were able to bring things out in people that wouldn't have come out normally (i.e. our miracle wedding and the unity and teamwork we witnessed, the prayer chains... and people saying such encouraging words to us that they normally probably would have kept to themselves, etc.).
The past few days, I've had this verse in my mind... every good and perfect gift comes from above (James 1:17)... and another one from 1 Corinthians that says "what do you have that you did not receive?". Our life, our love, our marriage, our friends and family... are all gifts. We did nothing to earn it and we're not going to hang on so tightly as if we did earn it. We mourn some things that didn't turn out the way we would have liked but we're both trying, by God's grace, to keep things in an eternal perspective and still try to honor God in all that we do.
It's a pretty nice day today so we're going to go out for a bit. Just thought I'd send out an update before we left the house.
Please be in prayer for our decision on whether or not to do the surgery, for the swelling/necrosis to resolve on its own miraculously, and for peace for both of us. And for the doctors to have wisdom and discernment as well.
Love you all,
Tiff (& Anderson)
Tiffany Chen
May 20, 2009, 4:07:56 PM5/20/09
to ipray4anderson
Hey all,
It's been a long night for us so it's going to be a quickie.
Early this morning around 2am Anderson wakes me up and tells me that his chest is numb and his back really really hurts. So we get up and get to the MD Anderson Emergency Center around 2:20am. It's such a blessing that we're so close to the hospital.
Some hardships we had to endure was that we stayed as long as Anderson possibly could... 12 hours but all that got done was a chest xray and a spine CT. They wanted to do an MRI of the spine (which is an 1.5-2hr procedure) but Anderson and I really couldn't take being in the hospital anymore. We hadn't slept and he hadn't eaten (I ate his breakfast because well... I was starving and he was NPO before the CT)... so needless to say, we were both a bit grumpy and miserable and we left the hospital against the advice of the nurse practitioner in the EC.
Anderson's not feeling the greatest. He hasn't felt nausea and vomitting in a while but he's had a few pre-up-chucks this morning. It could be from the dilaudid he had for his back pain... also could be from his lack of sleep, his lack of food... who knows. So we're home now and he's trying to sleep some and we'll probably go back to the hospital when/if he feels better. He was having a really hard time walking from the car to the apartment. I'm hoping some sleep will do him some good.
His chest xray and spinal CT were negative. His labs came back OK except for his D-dimer which may indicate a clot somewhere. Anyway, they couldn't find it. The next step is an MRI.
Please be in prayer for his numbness, his back pain, and for him to get rest. And for all of the bad stuff to miraculously disappear.
And rest for me too. I'm really feeling the effects of pulling an all nighter. Gonna crash.
<3,
Tiff
p.s. Anderson did say something that I thought was pretty funny. After he had gotten IV pain meds, he asked me... "what was in that IV?" I said "dilaudid". He said, "can we buy that for home?". K. Somehow it's not so funny when I type it out and maybe it was only funny to me because I'm a sleepy nurse. I just imagined him trying to buy some over the counter dilaudid or something. K. Stopping now. Not funny. You can laugh at my awkwardness.
It's been a long night for us so it's going to be a quickie.
Early this morning around 2am Anderson wakes me up and tells me that his chest is numb and his back really really hurts. So we get up and get to the MD Anderson Emergency Center around 2:20am. It's such a blessing that we're so close to the hospital.
Some hardships we had to endure was that we stayed as long as Anderson possibly could... 12 hours but all that got done was a chest xray and a spine CT. They wanted to do an MRI of the spine (which is an 1.5-2hr procedure) but Anderson and I really couldn't take being in the hospital anymore. We hadn't slept and he hadn't eaten (I ate his breakfast because well... I was starving and he was NPO before the CT)... so needless to say, we were both a bit grumpy and miserable and we left the hospital against the advice of the nurse practitioner in the EC.
Anderson's not feeling the greatest. He hasn't felt nausea and vomitting in a while but he's had a few pre-up-chucks this morning. It could be from the dilaudid he had for his back pain... also could be from his lack of sleep, his lack of food... who knows. So we're home now and he's trying to sleep some and we'll probably go back to the hospital when/if he feels better. He was having a really hard time walking from the car to the apartment. I'm hoping some sleep will do him some good.
His chest xray and spinal CT were negative. His labs came back OK except for his D-dimer which may indicate a clot somewhere. Anyway, they couldn't find it. The next step is an MRI.
Please be in prayer for his numbness, his back pain, and for him to get rest. And for all of the bad stuff to miraculously disappear.
And rest for me too. I'm really feeling the effects of pulling an all nighter. Gonna crash.
<3,
Tiff
p.s. Anderson did say something that I thought was pretty funny. After he had gotten IV pain meds, he asked me... "what was in that IV?" I said "dilaudid". He said, "can we buy that for home?". K. Somehow it's not so funny when I type it out and maybe it was only funny to me because I'm a sleepy nurse. I just imagined him trying to buy some over the counter dilaudid or something. K. Stopping now. Not funny. You can laugh at my awkwardness.
Tiffany Chen
May 21, 2009, 2:11:58 AM5/21/09
to ipray4anderson
Hey friends,
So we went back to the Emergency Center, but by the time they triaged us, the MRI department was closed so we have to call tomorrow morning to see if they can fit us in. I don't think it's going to be an easy process, but we'll do what we can and hopefully it'll all turn out OK.
Anderson's still numb in the chest a little bit and the numbness goes all the way down to his feet. He says it feels like it all "fell asleep" like pins and needles/tingling. He's more uncoordinated now and slightly frustrated that he can't really walk on his own anymore but we're going to work with what we've got and make the best of it. I'm here to help him and Kelly's coming to Houston tomorrow to help out too.
One good thing is that we up'd his steroids today and his back pain seems to have gone away.
going to go to bed now... will let you all know what happens later on... when something happens.
Thank you again all of you for praying for us and for also encouraging us through your testimony of how we've encouraged you. It all really goes both ways. Thank you for being there for us and for hanging in here with us. God is good and I hope you all feel it like we do. :)
<3,
Tiff & Anderson
So we went back to the Emergency Center, but by the time they triaged us, the MRI department was closed so we have to call tomorrow morning to see if they can fit us in. I don't think it's going to be an easy process, but we'll do what we can and hopefully it'll all turn out OK.
Anderson's still numb in the chest a little bit and the numbness goes all the way down to his feet. He says it feels like it all "fell asleep" like pins and needles/tingling. He's more uncoordinated now and slightly frustrated that he can't really walk on his own anymore but we're going to work with what we've got and make the best of it. I'm here to help him and Kelly's coming to Houston tomorrow to help out too.
One good thing is that we up'd his steroids today and his back pain seems to have gone away.
going to go to bed now... will let you all know what happens later on... when something happens.
Thank you again all of you for praying for us and for also encouraging us through your testimony of how we've encouraged you. It all really goes both ways. Thank you for being there for us and for hanging in here with us. God is good and I hope you all feel it like we do. :)
<3,
Tiff & Anderson
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