5-12-2010

This blog is for you to keep up on our mom's condition without her house getting 20 calls a day. Rest is often difficult for her and ringing phones don't help. Heather, Brandy and Bobbi will make efforts to update this blog frequently so everyone who wants to can stay in the loop.

So this all started with mom having a lot of abdominal pain and nausea around the beginning of April. She went to the doctor because it wasn't going away. The blood tests showed her liver was stressed. These symptoms often go along with gal stones so they did an ultrasound. They found her liver was quite enlarged and had lots of lesions in various sizes. Ultrasounds are not specific enough to say what the lesions were so she got a CT scan. It showed innumerable tumors in varying sizes scattered throughout her liver. It appears that these cancer cells came from someplace else because they are scattered through the liver, like they got stuck in several places along the process of the liver filtering her blood.

She had a liver biopsy Thursday, April 22nd. Results on Monday from her doctor said cancer and she was referred to an oncology specialist at Northwest Cancer Care in Spokane. She saw Dr. Nichols on Wednesday, April 28th.

The biopsy on those tumors has diagnosed her with adenocarcinoma, which is a pretty generic diagnosis and still does not point to a specific place in her body. Adenocarcinoma means "a cancer that starts inside a gland." There are glands in many areas of the body (for example, breast, lung, uterus, bowel, stomach), and quite often a cancer in an organ begins inside a gland within that organ. Glands are particularly likely to develop a cancer for two main reasons. First, glands are subjected to influences from the outside environment (for example, cigarette smoke affects the glands in the lungs) and also from the inside environment (for example, glands in the breast and the uterus are under the influence of the body's hormones). Second, the cells in glands multiply very frequently, so that faults in their growth control may appear more quickly than in other tissues. Hence adeno-carcinomas are relatively common type of cancer. (What You Really Need to Know about Cancer, p. 327)

Many tests have not shown where the primary tumor is. The doctor says it may be tiny and not causing any trouble. They may find it at some point or not. Because the doctor is unable to find the primary point of the cancer, she is not eligible for a liver transplant.

Right now the priority is her liver. She has had 2 CT scans less than 2 weeks apart and the tumors have visibly increased in size. She will begin chemotherapy (May 6) in hopes of decreasing the size of the tumors to extend her life and shrink the size of her liver making her more comfortable. She has chemotherapy once a week for three weeks and then one week off. Initially, she plans to go through 2 sessions of chemo and then the doctor will do further tests to see if the tumors in her liver have gotten smaller.

We have all (mom, dad, Heather, Brandy and Bobbi) visited with mom's doctor and asked a lot of questions. The bottom line is that her condition is not curable. She will die of cancer or complications from the cancer. We do not know how long she has left. Everything depends on her body's response to the chemotherapy. If chemo helps, the tumors may decrease in size to the point that they can locally treat specific tumors by surgery and may give her more time.

Mom is struggling everyday with pain. Because her liver is so enlarged it pushes on her stomach and makes it difficult to eat and drink fluids. Her pain medication makes life difficult because she can't drive, and the meds make her tired so she doesn't like to take too much. She is still working and plans to work as long as she can because "what else would I do except sit home all day being bored." Her office is being very supportive and patient as she is able to do less work or does the work but much slower than in the past.

We appreciate all of your love and support and especially your prayers and fasting.

If you want to come see our mom, please contact Brandy by cell phone 509-981-5950 or email at brandypoulsen@yahoo.com. She is mom's social coordinator. That may sound funny or excessive, but too bad. She's our mom. Since Brandy lives so close, she knows daily how mom is feeling and can make decisions about visitors and the number of people who can visit at one time. Mom tires quickly and needs to rest when she can. Please come for the day or plan to stay at a motel/hotel when you visit so her time can be spent visiting instead of cooking and cleaning for guests. Please respect this arrangement.

We plan to organize a get together once a month so that friends that don’t live in Cheney can come and spend some time with mom during a weekend. They will be potluck in nature and at Brandy’s house. The details will be posted to this blog.

Please feel free to make comments or drop a note to mom. We will see that she gets each one!

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