melanoma wife: IL-2 round two

LEARN THE ABCDEF'S OF MELANOMA!!! EARLY DETECTION IS THE KEY!

Showing posts with label IL-2 round two. Show all posts

Thursday, November 5, 2009

What faith can do

Click and enjoy!

This morning has been rough. Marcus had 6th dose at 2am and all was well until 4am. Nurse came in to get vitals and made him stand up for weight check. Afterwards-everything went downhill fast!! All at once chills/rigors started and at the same time he got nauseaous-vomitted and nose started bleeding-BAD scene in room P1004. He has totally had enough! Says when doc comes in this morning he is telling her he is done-that last dose really worked him
over. This whole round over all hasn't been too bad, but his swelling started sooner
and it just seems his body is done.He is finally peacefully resting-thank God. So I decided to share the video above because it helped me so much this morning. Real hard to see the man you love suffer like this. But I know God is working-I have complete and total FAITH!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Moving all the while

5th dose down! Marcus had 5th dose of IL-2 around 6:30 and as of 8 no chills/rigors.
He even ate supper and is watching
the world series now-he is super swollen with
all the fluids and feels like crap-but he is hanging on and not
complaining one bit! He is such a fighter-I admire his strength
so much. So next dose scheduled for 2am-then see doc in morning-
and will let him know if he'll go more-or not-keep the prayers coming!!!!!
So far they have helped him so much-so please don't stop!! God is "Moving all the while"-listen to this song by sidewalk prophets and u will know what I mean ;). Love u all!!!!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Restin and rocking along!

Sorry I have been bad about posting today-BUT it is only because we have nothing to post-THANK GOD-Marcus has been resting all day after his 1st dose this morning around 9:40-he will receive his 2nd dose about 6pm. Just need tons of prayers-we know the tumors aren't gone yet-BUT- they WILL be soon because God is running this show-not IL-2, not the docs and not MD Anderson-ONLY God has the power to heal-and we are patiently waiting for Him to do His great work!!!!!!! We love u all and thank u so much for every prayer u send our way!

how it all began-the "mole" story

well, just for those that don't already know-here is how this journey began. it all started with a little mole that marcus had since birth, on his thumb. in early 2007, i noticed that it had started to change-it was bigger and part of it was black and part was brown-i really didn't know much about melanoma, but i remember the way it looked-it reminded me of the mole on my niece's foot that a dr. removed when she was small, because he said if they didn't remove it, most definitely it would turn cancerous when she went through puberty. ANYWAYS, so i began nagging sweet hubby to go get it looked at. of course, he kept saying, "it's no big deal, i have had this mole since i was born-it's fine". so life went on.

well, hubby works with his hands since he is a machinist, and he bumped the mole-it bled-it grew bigger. a few months later, he bumped it at work AGAIN-it bled-it grew bigger-and now it actually started to bother him. it was sensitive.

one day out of the blue he called me from work-and asked me to make an appt. for him to go to the dr. to get the mole removed. THANK GOD! so of course i got right on that phone and made him an appt. first call to his current primary care phys. was a joke-they couldn't see him for at least another week or so because they were only seeing flu patients on fridays (the only weekday hubby has off) and didn't feel his mole was anything to fret about! well, i sure thought it was and called my primary care phys.-she had no problem seeing him on friday like he wanted!

sure enough, once he saw her, she didn't like the looks of the mole and immediately sent him to a dermatologist. and only by God's hand guiding-did she decide to NOT wait 3-6 months for a dermatolgist in beaumont to get an opening-but she sent him to a dr. in mid-county-that she didn't even know-she had just received his business card in the mail the week before-and decided since he could work hubby in so quickly-that he was the ONE!!! THANK YOU GOD!!!!

well, the next week came-marcus went to the dermatologist-wanting to get that mole removed!! to his surprise-the dr. wanted to biopsy it-he didn't like the looks of it either. (do you see a pattern here? sweet wife was on to something !) he talked the med. asst. lady into cutting as much of the mole off as she could-and she did-we later found out that she removed all the cancer from the thumb with that biopsy! one week later, we were told that the biopsy showed malignant melanoma and they sent us straight to MD Anderson in Houston!!!! talk about scary!

the medical oncologist explained that the type of cancer he had was called superficial spreading melanoma-and it liked to spread to the lymph nodes-so he suggested a partial amputation of the thumb-to make sure he got all the cancer-and a sentinal node biopsy-to see which, if any lymph nodes had cancer- Marcus wanted to save his thumb-so that is what they did. the dr. removed the margin around what was left of the mole-and took a skin graft from the side of his stomach to rebuild the thumb. this all healed very well.

they did the sentinal node biopsy and found that there was one lymph node under his arm that had cancer-it ended up having 20 cells in it-so they suggested he remove all the lypmh nodes from under his arm. he did this and all the other nodes came back CANCER FREE!!!!!!!

now they also suggested he do 4 weeks of high dose interferon to kill any cells that may have gotten loose from that node-to prevent this monster from coming back. they also want him to do 11 months of the interferon shots-but we don't know how far he will go with those. all depends on how sick they make him-and if they are anything like the high dose-he may only go 2 weeks.**MARCUS COMPLETED 4 WEEKS OF HIGH DOSE INTERFERON AND DID THE SHOTS 3/WEEK FOR ABOUT 3 MONTHS BEFORE HE STOPPED**

we later discovered that once the cancer has spread to lymph nodes closest to the mole, it is considered stage III-no one ever really told us this-we had to learn on our own.***UPDATE-8-31-09 LUNG METS WERE DISCOVERED SO MARCUS WAS UPGRADED TO STAGE IV***
***AFTER IL-2 AND SEVERAL CHEMO COMBOS, MARCUS LOST HIS BATTLE 4-1-2010. MELANOMA SUCKS!!!***

this is a brief outline of the "mole" story-hope it was easy to follow-and hope it makes everyone think twice about their moles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE LEARN ABOUT MELANOMA-IT IS NOT "JUST" SKIN CANCER!!!!!

melanoma wife

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