Happy Thanksgiving!
In our last update we shared that James’s surgery on his abdomen went well. The surgeon was able to remove James’s right kidney alongside a large tumor (weighing in at about 2 lbs) and additionally 11 small tumors in his left kidney. Afterwards James spent a couple weeks in the hospital with David recovering from the surgery.
After recovering from surgery, James was well enough to undergo radiation for the remaining tumors in his lungs. The surgeon felt confident she got all the cancer from James’s abdomen, so we didn’t need to do radiation there, just his lungs.
The doctors did a scan to map the tumors in James’s lungs so that they could make a plan for where to do the radiation. They fed the information about the tumors to a program and received a plan for the radiation so that it could get the visible tumors and also the likely small ones that we couldn’t see. The time in the radiation machine was actually really short— maybe like 20 minutes. We would drive to Seattle, take James’s vitals, sedate him, treat him with radiation, wait for him to wake up, verify his vitals and leave each day. We normally were home by noon or so.
For radiation James needed to be fasting, so David and I worked together to try to get him enough calories during the day after after the appointments. We would set up James’s feeds at night, switch him to clear liquids, and turn them off. It was tiring waking up for James (and getting up with Isaac too). I drove James to appointments each morning and James did really well and he never complained to me asking for water or food. I made sure to never eat or drink in front of him in the mornings so that he would hopefully not remember he was fasting. He did really well with the appointments, which lasted a week and a half. He got to ring the gong at the end of the radiation appointments to celebrate completing them.
One of the side effects of radiation is nausea, which is also a side effect of chemotherapy. So James was nauseous for a while and it was a little tricky for us to figure out how to help him be comfortable. We are grateful the laundry room and linen closets are next to his room. Made washing sheets easier.
A month ago James completed radiation for the tumors on his lungs. His hair has started growing back in due to the break in chemotherapy treatments. We thought it would fall out again as we have been doing more chemotherapy treatments, but it’s stayed (at least for now), which has been fun for us to see again. James looks so good with eyebrows and eyelashes!
James has had 2 colds back-to-back and unfortunately due to the chemotherapy now has gotten a couple fevers. With cancer patients, fevers are considered a medical emergency because they could be serious, so we’ve taken him to the emergency room a couple times. Today we got home from a short hospital stay and are grateful to all be home together as a family.
We have felt a lot of love from our friends and family as well as I feel a great deal of peace from God. With the surgery done and the radiation done, our plan is to continue chemotherapy for a couple months and we feel like many of James’s milestones are completed. We are planning to do a scan on James’s lungs mid December to check to see the impact of the radiation on James’s lung tumors. We are hopeful that we can stick to the plan and James can be cancer free end of January.
Love you all!
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