Another ride on the roller coaster - never know what to expect
Where do I begin with the events of yesterday? Sam and I talked on the way to Birmingham that this would be the first time in almost two years that we were not just sooooo anxious about the CT results because we both already knew that it wouldn't be good. He has just been in too much pain, feels miserable and continues to be unable to eat. He had already made up his mind about future chemo treatments and when Sam sets his mind to do something, he will not change it. The only thing that had us puzzled was the pain in his chest radiating to his arm that continued to be unaffected by pain medication. Well now we know why.

He had the CT about 9:30 a.m. and they called us back to Dr. Posey's office in about an hour. The one thing that is really nice about UAB is that you get the results of your CT that day. We were sitting in the room waiting for the doctor and I noticed that Sam's left arm was extremely reddish/purple in color and was beginning to swell. I immediately called the nurse; they removed his shirt and his neck was also swelling and the area around the chemo port was extremely red with dark veins protruding. Apparently when they put the blood pressure cuff on his arm, it triggered what was silently lying underneath. They sent us back up to the 3rd floor for an ultra-sound of that area and it revealed numerous blood clots in the arm, sub-clavian area and jugular vein - possibly resulting from the chemo port. Anyway, they gave him a shot in the stomach and I will give him blood thinner shots for the next 14 days to try to get these clots resolved. Hopefully the pain will get better.

Now back to the results of the CT. Without going into detail, it was not good. Sam only had one treatment of the Erbitux and irinotecan but everything had grown. He even had new activity in the liver which has been stable for over a year. Dr. Posey agreed with Sam that it wasn't going to do any good to keep making him miserable with chemo. We will do some radiation next week to the large tumors in the chest - particulary the one in the sternum and mediastinum. This is just a pallative treatment to help with the pain but was very successful when we did it a few months ago.

We even had a laugh on the way home. Our mill here in Demopolis is very process focused. I told him that he sounded like this whole thing was a CPI project (continuous process improvment). He said that is exactly what it is like - the ending and completion of a process here in this life and moving forward to the next.

Now for the best part of the day. We went to bed early because we were tired. The doorbell rang about 9:00 and I wondered who in the world would be coming to our door with all the lights out. I opened the door and there stood Cindy, our daughter. She had caught a plane in Tampa and flew into Birmingham. Her best friend from Tuscaloosa picked her up and brought her home. She will be here until Monday. You should see the smile on Sam's face - he's happy and is O.K.
with everything. As I have said before, he is a very unusual and very strong person.

As always, all of you are in my thoughts and prayers daily. Send some prayers my way for some strength to handle this. I'll try to get Cindy to make a picture while she is here.