Chemo Day.....Oops, No Chemo After All But Blood Instead

This past weekend was wonderful. Joes's choir at PGUMC put on a magnificent performance with their Christmas cantata. The combination of the 20 voices and 11 instruments was magnificent. I wish everyone could have heard it. Joe had worked so hard to pull it off and he did. Even when not feeling his best, he rose to the occasion and anyone that was at either the 8:30am or 11:00am services were treated to a beautiful program. We even got to see some of The Grove service regulars there to see and hear the cantata (Larry it was very good to see you).
Today however, reality was back as we had Joe's next doctor and chemo appointments. After dropping Joe off a little after 7am at the Duke Cancer Center for labs I went on to the office and Facetimed his appointment with Dr. Zafar. Joe's blood work was not optimal and thus Dr. Zafar wouldn't allow the chemo treatment. Instead, since his hemoglobin counts were low, Joe got a blood transfusion instead. This of course meant more blood work to verify blood type before he could get the transfusion. We had to wait 2 1/2 hours before he was called for labs and didn't get up to the infusion center until after noon. The wait before going back for the transfusion was 2 hours. But finally we got back into a room. It even is a room with a quasi view!

Still though, there was a wait in the room before the blood came.  Apparently they were experiencing difficulty with the tube delivery system and all drugs, blood, etc. were having to be hand delivered.  It was well past 3:00pm before it arrived and started flowing, but it did.  Joe's first comment is "it's like True Blood" (HBO vampire show).

Another observation (one i have complained about for two months) was that Joe's belly, where the hernia is, has gotten larger and larger and is now looking very distended and bloated.  Even Dr. Zafar's nurse noticed his belly as soon as she entered the exam room.  With that in mind, Joe is having an ultrasound tomorrow to see if there is any fluid build up or some other cause of the bloated appearance.  We will cross the bridge to treatment for that depending on what they find, if anything.  On January 2nd he will have a CT scan to give us a new "baseline" for where we stand as far as the tumors size and then he has a doctors appointment and chemo on the 3rd.  Also, his stomach issues don't appear to have been completely resolved, so he will be back on antibiotics for the next 10 days. 

So that has been today. We finally left the DCC a little past 6pm.  Not exactly what we planned on, but then it has become commonplace  for our plans to not go as planned.  Joe is handling it well.  He's tired of being tired and I'm tired of him being tired.  He however is much stronger than me.  He sits here calmly.  I sit here anxious with tears.  I was all smiles yesterday.  So proud of Joe.  So proud of the PGUMC choir.  I beamed.  Today I find it hard to manage a smile.  I need a good comedy...a good long, gut busting laugh.  Maybe I should just have Joe dance for me.  That's always good for a chuckle.

Thank you to everyone for the cards, emails and prayers.  We both greatly appreciate them.

"Worship fully, Spend less, Give more, Love all"