Decoding Confusion

Hi everyone.
I need you all to pray. Please pray for Christine. Christine is the sister of my very close friend and she is 39 and has a husband and 2 small children. Christine was just diagnosed with what appears to be Stage IV Ovarian Cancer. The story is too familiar and Christine has been being treated for issues concerning her bladder for quite some time. I am guessing that this was overlooked (obviously). I can tell you speaking from experience that this is probably one of the most sickening things you never want to hear. I am asking you to pray for her and for her family. They NEED your prayers right now as they figure out the mass confusion of what doc to go to and what treatment to have and how to tell the kids and everything else horrible that goes along with this kind of news.

You have all prayed for our family faithfully and we have felt those prayers and I ask that you say of prayer for this family as well.

On to other cancer news.

Well, we just got done meeting with Dr. Selby and his team as well as with Dr. Ault via speaker phone.

Here is the new and very different plan of attack.
They are not going to be doing ANY surgery at this point but Gary has to remain hospitalized. Our BIG focus is getting Gary back to his chemo and Avastin regimen as quickly as possible and until they take care of and resolve the following problems we can not move forward with treatment.

Let's start with the liver.

Gary has some blocked bile ducts in the left lobe of the liver where the lesion is. Dr. Selby will "perk" him (put a drain into his duct) to alleviate this blockage and take the risk for infection down. They will do this Monday.

They will leave the drain in and then Gary will have a catheter inserted through his leg and up into his liver and the chemotherapy will be administered directly to his liver.

As soon as the disease shrinks more then they can possibly do surgery to remove it. Dr. Selby is afraid to remove the small liver lesion because it could spread the disease further and God already knows we do not need that!

Now on to the really complicated portion of our situation...Gary's bowels.

Gary had an enema scan today and guess what? No obstruction. No narrowing. No nothing abnormal is showing up. The doctors are stumped. Gary is in severe pain still with no medical explanation. There is a portion of the lower small intestines that looks "ratty" like an old used rope but things seem to be flowing fine. Is it possible that it is damaged beyond repair? Yes say the docs but very unlikely. I keep reminding every new medical team that everything with Gary is "very unlikely".

The plan is this......Gary will drink Magnesium Citrate which will inevitably induce #2 (painful and lots of it!). TMI, huh?
If he successfully "goes" then they will start him on solid foods and we will see what happens.
If by Thursday or Friday he has not had #2 on his own then they will do surgery and explore the colon to determine what is causing the loss of functionality. It really is not functioning but anatomically there is nothing wrong with it.
Until it is figured out we can't have systemic therapy (chemo or Avastin).

They will give another shot with trying to control Gary's pain by giving his an epidural tomorrow morning. It did not work last time when he was at Hoag in February but you never know this time around!

I hope I explained everything correctly.

One very important closing thought.

I am here to tell you that prayer changes things people. I want you to really believe what you are praying about instead of just saying it. We had the opportunity to meet with a faithful man who prayed over Gary right before he was transferred here. One day I will share the whole story with you but I will say that maybe God's timing is coming and we will see a complete healing in Gary.

The unobstruction of Gary's bowel could just be just the beginning ....

Please pray for faith and peace and healing for our family as well as for Christine's family.

Love,
Lisa