Still In The Hospital…

Still in the Hospital as of today, Sunday May 30th.  Yesterday was a tiring day for Kelly.  It started Friday afternoon after we met with a new Doctor,(Dr. Andrews).  He is a Neurologist, Neurosurgeon and he is also specialized in radio surgery, gamma knife, etc which may be treatment options for Kelly’s brain at some point in the future.  His recommendation to us was to get a Ommaya Reservoir (Chemo Port in the brain) installed as soon as possible. This port is where the new treatment will be given from. The port is where the chemo will be injected to the brain and spinal fluids.   I agreed that this should be done quickly so she could recover and get started on the chemo ASAP.  Dr. Andrews mentioned that in order for him to do the procedure, we would have to get a MRI of the entire brain ASAP to see if their was any new obstructions or issues that would stop us from doing the surgery.  Dr Andrews then ordered a MRI of her head that was suppose to take place at 8pm…unfortunately Kelly did not get taken down until after 11pm because of issues the MRI machine was having.  Due to the late MRI, Kelly was not up back in the room till after midnight.  Then she needed to have a special head wash that would be used as a disinfectant for her head to help prevent infection during the procedure.  Most of the night nurses were in and out checking vitals etc so morning came quickly with little sleep for both Kelly and I. The hospital staff came to the room a little before 7:30am to take her down to the OR.  When we got to the OR we met with the anesthesiologist (Dr. Sullivan) and Dr. Andrews to go over the surgery.  After chatting with Dr. Sullivan, we found out he is actually best friends with our other surgeon who preformed Kelly’s mastectomy (Dr. Walsh).  This was weird because they even look a lot a like lol.  I guess Dr Walsh was even in Dr Sullivan's wedding.   Anyway, Kelly then got her IV courage as they like to call it and was off. 

She was in surgery for about an hour.  Dr Andrews came out the waiting room, got me and whisked me into the recovery room.  Normally guests are not allowed in but being that is was a Saturday and no other patients where there they said it was fine.  Dr Andrews and I had a conversation at that point…he informed me that the procedure went well and that it would take about 10 days before the stitches could come, etc.  He then told me some good news…he believes from what he could see on the MRI that Kelly’s two tumors had decreased in size a good amount, almost to where they were hard to see on the MRI (Yay).  He was not able to provide us any new news about the Meningi involvement though, which is what is the bigger issue for Kelly.  Dr. Andrews let me know that they did pull out some spinal/brain fluid during the procedure which will be sent out for testing which may determine how effective the radiation was against the tumor cells in the brain and in the Meningi. 

One of Dr Scates (our oncologist) partners from South Bay Oncology visited with us this morning in regards to what we need to do next for Kelly.  The Oncologist had talked with Dr Scates and agreed that we should wait till Monday to receive her first dose of spinal fluid chemo which would give her a full day to heal from the surgery.  As of right now, we are thinking that we may be going home sometime on Monday afternoon, but this is not a for sure thing…It will mostly depend on how Kelly does after her first chemo treatment.   We are anxious to get home but at the same time because of Kelly’s limited mobility we understand the hospital is probably the best place to be right now.    The nurses are asking that she does not have any visitors at this time due to the fact that she has had almost no rest in the last few days and she gets tired quickly from the pain meds.

The other news we heard is that by Kelly taking the spinal treatments, she will not be excluded from the trial drug she was set to begin called PARP Inhibitor.  This type of treatment is given with two chemo therapies, the major one being Carboplatin.  The initial results from the first trial of this drug was very successful and promising, so we are hoping they drug company will release this drug ASAP and Kelly can begin on that as well. 

Thank you all for checking the blog for the latest on Kelly as I know so many of you are worried about how she is doing.  I will continue to try and keep this blog as current as I can.  Hopefully, Kelly can start writing again soon, when she starts to feel a bit better.  She misses talking and seeing everyone…she loves all of you and appreciates all the support and kind words you continue to bring her.

God bless, Manny