Bronchoscopy and Mediastinoscopy

Hi there! I want to thank everyone who has commented on this blog, or texted me about the blog, or stopped to chat with me about it. It makes me feel connected and comforted; this would be a much  poorer, more difficult journey without you all. I am very grateful to you for your support.

  This is Swedish Hospital - it is over a city block big. all the offices and specialty towers take up more and more blocks. It is quite a impressive place.

I had another bronchoscopy there Wednesday evening along with a mediastinoscopy.
The bronchoscopy is where they put you on a ventilator and stick a flexible tube into your lung. It is lighted and allows the doc to see in there and also pass small tools down. Dr. Gilbert was trying to snatch pieces of the two lymph nodes that lit up the PET scan.
The mediastinoscopy is more invasive. Dr. Aye cut an opening in my middle upper chest and looked at the lymph nodes in my airway. He likewise was trying to get some good pieces of the lymph nodes to see if any of them were cancerous.
Everything went well, but I had some trouble with the anesthesia. I just could not wake up completely.

  This is Gemmalyn, my recovery room nurse. She is from Oahu and signed a two-year contract with Swedish when she finished college there. She is an only child and misses home. So when she fulfills her contract she will probably go back to the islands even tho she loves Swedish. Her parents miss her like crazy and her dad recently paid too ship her car to Seattle, because its a good car and she is used to driving it and he wants her to be safe on the road. She was just as sweet as could be! I swear I heard her say the car had 2 doors on one side and only 1 on the other - but that may have been the anesthesia. :)

The docs had hoped to have results today, but evidently that did not happen. We called a couple of times, but did not hear back.

This was a piece of urban art we saw on our morning walk. I thought it was too weird and too cool not to share... well, for some reason it wanted to open the blog, not close it and I can't get it moved. sigh. I am soo bad with technology.

Have a great weekend everyone! Thank you again for all you are doing to lift me up.

Beautiful day

We have been wandering around this first hill/Capitol hill area this morning as we wait to head to Swedish.
Remember when you or your brothers, or your children had those big yellow Tonka trucks and loved to move dirt around? We sat of the sidewalk across from the hotel and watched dump truck after dump truck move dirt out of this MASSIVE hole they have dug in the ground
Right now they are filling it with cement from the biggest boom we have ever seen.

We also stumbled across a huge Starbucks that roasts and bags coffee in a way that you can watch the whole thing 

They also sell clothes made from old coffee trees and plastic. Mark looked at a cool jacket that was made from recycled fishing nets.

Seattle is always interesting!

My docs at Swedish

   The famous Dr. Aye, who will do the mediastinoscopy
( an incision in my chest) if they need to tomorrow. If I am so lucky as to get to do a lung re-section somewhere down the line, he will also be that surgeon. Caring, compassionate, and very humane. He is the one that said, "Stage 3A is curable. Let's make sure you are one of those."
  This is Dr. Gilbert - he is the one that will do the initial biopsy; using a needle(endobronchial untrasoound) to try and get to the suspect lymph nodes.Really, really nice guy.

We think we are in very good hands.

moderately bad news and good news

It was a beautiful day in Seattle today. Mark and I got to spend lots of time just walking around around enjoying the fall weather, the beautiful architecture, and the interesting people.

We liked Swedish a lot. From the receptionists to the docs, everyone was friendly and up beat.

Here's the good news:
1. My PET Scan showed no cancer involvement with other major organs.
2. My PFT showed my lung function, despite the cancer and the infection, to be at 89%.
3. The docs are pleased with how fit I am and that I have no history of things like smoking. Nor do I have a family history of lots of cancer.

The moderately bad news is this:
1. The cancer is stage 3A. some of you will recall a story I have told about a doc well over 20 years ago when I first had pneumonia. He told me it looked like I had "aspirated a peanut" into mu lungs. I thought that was dumb - how could I do that and not know? And he just shrugged it off. The mass is about the size of a small tangerine and todays doctor said it had been growing for a long time.
2. a couple of lymph nodes in my bronchial airways got lit up during the PET scan.

The path forward:
1. We are skipping the visit to Virginia Mason. It will just delay moving forward.
2. We will have 2 more biopsies tomorrow at Swedish (I go in at 3 and they will do them at 5:00 pm).
3. There is always a chance that the lymph nodes are reacting to the cancer and the infection and not cancerous themselves. The results of the biopsies will determine what we do next.

My advice to you:
Even though I have been diagnosed with asthma, have had a bronchial infection here and there NO-ONE has ever done a chest X-ray between the one in Mount Vernon and the one this February. It would not hurt to ask, when you have  chest-involved illnesses, if perhaps that is something you should have done.

I have pictures of the sweet men who are doing my procedures tomorrow. I just can't get them downloaded right now. Plus I need to go eat, before they cut me off in a couple of hours... I don't want to be a Snickers commercial tomorrow!

I love hearing from you! The texts and the comments left here really and truly are helping us get through this every day. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

The PET Scan

I am typing this from a lovely hotel in Seattle that Liz helped us get (it is perfect, thank you!)

Today I had my PET Scan; it is an amazing piece of science that will tell us if the cancer is localized to my left lobe, which we hope and pray it is. Or if it has spread.

Basically they tag glucose molecules with nuclear isotopes. You go on a low/no carbs, sugar, fruits,no anything-at-all-worth eating diet for about 24 hours. And you drink horrendous amounts of water. At the imaging center they put an IV port into your arm and push this steel lined canister of
 nuclear material into your arm. The cancer cells are hungrier than normal cells and so they are the first places that absorb the glucose (sugar molecules). They give you a relaxant (I am wound a little tight so they gave me 2 Xanax).

Because at this point you are, like Rhianna sings "Radioactive, radioactive" they close the door and tell you to relax for an hour. I was thinking "Yea, right", but I fell fast asleep.

Before I knew it they woke me up and put me in this machine
I was lucky - the scan was "eyes to thighs" instead of "head to toe". It moved in about 2 inch increments as it scanned and I was done in 25 minutes. Easy-peasy.

Tomorrow Dr. Aye hopefully will tell us that this scan and the PFT mean.

Thank you again my friends for all your good wishes, your help, and your support!

Dusty's battle cry

My son Dusty came over Wednesday and said as he left, "Yesterday was our day to be sad. From now on we fight." I think of statement several times every day.

I want you to think of that, too, and don't be sad any more. Look around you at the people who have fought, and beat, cancer. Some of them more than once. Our district is filled with heroic men and women who have tackled something like this and come out victorious. Deb Fancher, Donna Grubaugh, Kristi Privette, Martha Sandusky, and Denise Wimmett's daughter are just a few. In each of your inner circles and families there are many, many more.

This is a blimp, a bump in my road, If you were honest, many of you have at one time or another thought I was a mean bitch. I can be tough and I am strong-willed. I am a fighter and I know, deep in my heart, that I am going to be fine.

But, I don't want to minimize the impact that your support will have. I know I need help. Michele Earley sends me a profane text every morning that makes me laugh and puts a smile on my face and helps me start my day with an easy heart. I will forever and ever be grateful to that extraordinary woman!

There is a Beatles song with a chorus that says
"I get by with a little help from my friends,
I get high with a little help from my friends,
Going to try with a little help from my friends"

I just realized how sappy I am getting - I promise not to do it again. Thank you all for your good wishes and support. Mark and I both appreciate you so very, very much! 

My awesome oncologist

The gentleman in the pink is Dr. Lu. He will be my oncologist.
He is, pardon my french, frickin awesome! He spent an hour and a half with Mark and I on Friday. His honesty scared us a bit, but certainly left us better informed and in lots of ways reassured.

A couple of good things:
1. I do not have small cell cancer - that is the worst.
2. Biopsies and such are just samples, which is part of the reason why I have been told since March that this mass was not cancer. You have to grab just the right place sometimes to see the cancer. My last biopsy, on the 13th, took core samples and that was what made the difference. Anyway... nothing they have seen or sampled has indicated that this thing is malignant.
3. The mass does not appear to have grown since the first CT scan in March. They only took one measurement at that time, but that place was the same size in September.

The Pulmonary Function Test

So, best case scenerio for me in this journey is to find that I am a candidate to have the left upper lobe surgically removed from my lung. That is where the cancer mass is.
The first determining factor is to evaluate my lung/pulmonary capacity; I have to be able to live without that portion of the lung. Any one who knows me knows I have lots of lung capacity; I talk a lot, I do spin class, I run around my building like crazy and I am never short of breath.
My say-so, however, did not count for much.
So, I had a PFT done on Thursday. Below is the tech who did it and the booth I sat in for the tests. They measured my regular breathing, how much air I took in with a deep breath and how forcefully I could blow it out. They measured how the pressure in the booth changed when I breathed in and out. And the evaluated how much air was being absorbed by calculating the difference in how much air I took in and what I released out. All in all it was pretty interesting.

            

The tech said I did good, so keep your fingers crossed.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.
This is my great friend Dave Elkins and his wonderful son, Owen. They gave me the gift of their time this morning, came to the house, and set this blog up for me
.  I am touched by all the good wishes and beautiful notes that people have sent me since my diagnosis on Tuesday. I know that some of you sincerely want to be kept in the loop as we travel this road and I figure a blog will be a good way to do that.
I will try and update it everyday, at least for the next week as we meet with doctors and make decisions.
I am so tech-dumb that I am not sure, yet, about all the features of a blog. If you can respond, please do. And don't hesitate to use my district e-mail to keep in touch or text my phone . You lift me up, make me smile, and do me so much good that I look forward to hearing from you.