Auto-Immune Confirmed

So today I was officially told that I have an auto-immune disorder. This is not a big surprise. Ever since my primary doctor suspected it nearly two months ago I knew it would turn out this way.

She is that good of a doctor.

But I had to go through all of the tests and blood draws and everything else to confirm it. So that is what I have been doing.

And today's test, the one that confirmed it, well, to put it bluntly, it sucked.

I had an EMG. This is a test that measures the strength of your muscles and any change in the strength after exercise.

And to do this the shoot electric current through your body

Yup, it is an electric shock test. Not my favorite.

So you get into one of those stylish hospital gowns, then they start at your feet. They attach electrodes in a couple of places then shoot some electricity through you to see how your muscles respond.

And they work your way up the body.

Foot, calf, leg, arm, funny bone, then the face.

And they spent the most amount of time on my face.

The electric probe would shoot out five bursts, then I would have to do some facial exercises, then five more bursts. This went on for about 8 minutes.

The resident held my head in place so I wouldn't jerk too much.

So after all the tests I was talking with the doctor and she confirmed it was this auto-immune disorder. Then she said, "I knew it was that from the beginning, but I had to do the tests to confirm it."

Wonderful.

So I am starting on a new medication, hopefully it will make a difference. After four weeks I will meet with her again and re-evaluate. If the medication is not working as well as expected, then I will move to another medication. At this point she thinks that medication should take care of it.

And she did say that  hopefully in not too long I will be able to get rid of the eye patch.

That gives me hope.

So I ended my day with hope, and that is a great way to move forward.

Thank you for all the prayers and support, I will continue to keep you updated.

Thursday another test, Today dealing new realities

On Thursday I will be missing a few of my work meetings to go back to Madison for an EMG. From what I understand, this is a test to determine the strength of my muscles, especially the muscles that relate to my eyes.  It is also the test that will definitively tell me if I have Myasthenia Gravis or not.

I am really looking forward to getting those results. I want the diagnosis and I especially want to start the treatments. This has been going on a long time and I am ready for a step forward.

Having said that, I have started to notice that I truly do live in a new reality now. With all of the health issues that I have faced over the years, there have been very few, if any, physical effects on me. After cancer surgery I was doing a weddding a week later. After chemo I was back in the office within 48 hours. After radiosurgery, I was at a congregational meeting the next night.

Nothing has slowed me down.

But now, there is a new reality bearing down on me.

First I have to state, nothing big is really changing. I am still doing all my work, I am still traveling to all my meetings, I am still taking the girls to all of their swimming and tennis lessons. I am even in Chicago right now for three days of meetings.

But I am noticing that my eyes are getting tired much faster than they have in the past.

I have to take breaks from the meetings to close my eyes for a few minutes. It takes me longer to read things because my eyelids droop more. When I talk on the phone I rest my eyes so I can be ready for what is next.

It's not a huge deal, but it is a change. And it is a change I don't like.

Now I am hopeful that once I start treatments this will go away. I am hopeful that I will eventually lose the eypatch and go back to what was normal for so much of my life. I am hopeful.

But right now, this is the reality I live in.

All of us go through changes throughout our lives, including physical ones. And I think many of us struggle with these changes. Maybe it is the loss of our youth, maybe it is the fact that we just can't do what we used to be able to do and that frustrates us.

One of these changes is happening to me right now, and I am trying to find ways to embrace it rather than fight against it.

Oh, when I start treatments I will be fighting like crazy to get things back to normal, but right now, I am going to try my hardest to embrace this change and see what good might be able to come out of ir.

For example - since I need to rest my eyes more often, I am going to use this rest time as reflection time. I am going to ask myself - where have I seen God so far today?

When I am reading and start to get frustrated with my tired eyes, I will pause where I am and think back to what I just read, so that I engage with the book a little bit more.

And when I am no the phone with my eyes closed, I will push away the desire to multitask and concentrate on the person I am with.

I don't like this reality, but I have decided to use it to slow down my life a little.

And who knows, when things go back to normal with my eyes, maybe this slowed downway of doing things will continue.

So tonight, may all of you be blessed with open eyes to the blessings you have where you are.

A Shot in the Eye, Abnormal Results, and an Auto-Immune Disorder

I haven't posted much since the radiosurgery because I wasn't quite sure what to say. There have been a lot of doctor visits, more tests, and a possible diagnosis, but not anything concrete yet.

So here is where I stand:

I meet with the Radiosurgery doctor tomorrow. There is not much to talk about since I have not had another MRI yet to see how successful the surgery was. I was told that the MRI needs to wait a couple of months to see how successful the process was. So I will wait and assume that the tumor was blasted away.

The eye issue is still there. I wear a patch pretty much full-time now. The only real issue I have has to do with steps. I have a hard time judging the depth of the steps so I have become a big user of handrails.

The fluid behind my eye is decreasing, but not gone. So every time I see my eye doc in Madison I get a nice little shot in the eye to help dry the fluid out. They numb it up nice, so it really isn't all that painful. There is a possibility that if the discoloration behind the eye every grows that I may need a special type of radiation to deal with it, but the is not something we are considering now.

As for the double vision and drooping eye lid, it appears that my main doc was right, again. When I first saw her, before any of the tests, she made an educated guess that it was Myasthenia Gravis. This is an auto-immune disorder. It is not related to my cancer at all. It is a new, and rare, disease that has reared its ugly head in my life. I have had a number of blood tests that were highly abnormal and are starting to confirm this diagnosis. Next week I will have an EMG to test the muscles and confirm it.

There is no cure for Myasthenia Gravis, but there are treatments. The treatments vary from surgery to blood filtering to medications. With the treatments there is hope that the muscles in my eyes will work normal again and I can hold of the symptoms for a long time.

Once again, I realize just how special I am.

Most of the time I am pretty upbeat about everything. I enjoy what I am, doing and the activities the girls have us running to. I am busy and, I think, doing some good work.

But there are days that I am tired of all the doctor visits, the tests, and the waiting. To go a month without a doctors appointment is a dream.

And now we are in Lent, one of the seasons of the church year I appreciate the most. And it is this seasonal trek that keeps me grounded as I deal with all of the health stuff.

I will post more as I know more. As for now, my you always be blessed by having your eyes opened to gifts you have in your lives.

Spending the day with screws in my head

Yesterday was Radiosurgery day, and it was definitely a new experience. Overall the day went very smoothly, and I have very little pain today.

The day started around 9:30 when I got checked into my hospital room. After getting an IV running, I was brought to the basement of the hospital to have a frame installed onto my head. I was not sure what to expect with all of this, but it was simple and rather painless process.

They loaded me up with Valium and other fun things. Then, after explaining the procedure to me, the doctor came in, put some numbing agent on four spots on my head, and literally screwed this metal frame to my head. A couple times they had to stop and add more numbing agent, but it only took about 10 minutes. Below are a few pictures of how it turned out.

After the frame was put on I was then hauled in to have CT done of my head. The hardest part of this process was lying down and getting up again. The frame, while not that heavy, changed my balance and I needed support getting up and down.

I have to say that there was a nurse and an intern with me at this time who were amazing. The nurse had been doing this for quite awhile and was great at her job. The intern wanted to see how it was all done, and she demonstrated a great bedside manner. I appreciated them both a lot.

After the CT, I was brought upstairs and allowed to eat. Jennifer and her parents had come to spend the day with me, so we sat in my little room, talking and passing the time. I was given a few pain meds for a headache that appeared, but overall there was very little pain.

But eating lunch was a little funny.

First I had to find out how to order lunch. That involved calling the cafeteria and placing an order.

Putting a phone to my ear. With a frame on. That didn't really happen to well. Luckily my father-in-law was in the room so I just pointed at what I wanted and he called  it in.

The nurse also warned me not to get an apple. That made a lot of sense since there was no way I could get the apple to my mouth.

For the next three hours I just sat in the room, talking, Facebook posting, and listening to those around me. A little after 3:00 I was brought down to the radiation machine, again in the basement of the hospital.

I thought the next part would take over an hour. Turns out it only took about 15 minutes.

They loaded me into the machine, bolted me to the table, and then I have 5 arcs of radiation shot into my brain. each arc only took about 2 minutes. Between arcs they came in and readjusted me so they could come at a different angle.

Then I was done. The got me off of the table, brought me back to the first room and the nurses unscrewed the frame. Then Jennifer and her parents came in, and off we went.

I had enough Valium that I was feeling pretty good at the time, but a little later I started to get a bit of a headache. We were home by 5:30, the girls came home a little after 7:00 from Kid's Club. We put them to bed and not much later I was in bed too.

This morning I am feeling fine. I had a little headache and little tenderness on my head, but that is mostly gone now. I go back in a few weeks to see what is going on, but there isn't anything pressing right now.

Overall I feel good about the procedure. They knew what there were doing and there was very little doubt that they could destroy this tumor. And I look forward to the confirmation that it has been blown up.

We are still dealing with the eye issue. I see an eye doctor on Monday, and hopefully something will come from that that.

Thank you for all you prayers. More to come later.

Erik

Targeted Radiation - Zapping the Brain

Yesterday Jennifer and I went to Madison to meet with the Neurological Oncologist.

I was reminded how great UW is when it comes to treatment. The resident, specialist and nurses all took their time, answered every question we had, and made us feel comfortable in what is a stressful time.

The resident spent the most amount of time with us. He went through the scans with us and talked about the variety of treatments that have developed over the years when it comes to cancer in the brain. Radiation has radically changed over the years and has a very high success rate.

He did confirm that the cancer has moved to my brain and there is a 1.2mm spot. He talked about it being fairly big, but when the specialist said it wasn't that big when he came in. The pill I am on works very will with the cancer in most of the body, the problem is the central nervous system. There the pill is not as effective and the cancer traveled to my brain and set up shop.

They used to do only all brain radiation, but now that is not the norm when there is only one spot. Now they do Radiosurgery when is a very targeted type of radiation with a very heavy dose.

During this time they went over my eye issues as well and they are stumped. There is no reason for the eyes to have double vision, so I will be meeting with another doctor to get prisms in my glasses as they try to figure the eye stuff out.

So, the process I will be going through it not as intense as when I had surgery to remove part of my lung, but not as simple as the other radiation I have done.

Next Saturday I will be having another MRI. The one in Beloit was not as detailed as the doctor likes, so I need one with 1mm slices of the brain.

Then, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 5, I will go through the radiosurgery process. In the morning we will go to Madison and I will have a frame attached to my head. It will be screwed on, but supposedly all I will feel is a little pressure. I will then spend time in a hospital room with the frame on like a crown as they prep for the procedure.

Then they will be doing a CT scan which they will combine with the MRI and find the exact point to radiate. After they are set I will spend an hour or so bolted to a radiation table where they will be zapping this tumor from a variety of angles. During this time I will be some meds to keep me calm.

After the radiation I will have the frame removed, then I can go home. It is a one day procedure. The next day I may have a dull headache but that is about it.I will also have follow-up MRIs and PET scans to make sure that they got it.

A lot has happened very fast. I have been reminded, again, that there is a blessing here. The cancer is in a place where the symptoms should be motor function problems, and I don't have any of those. They found the spot because of something totally unrelated, like when they first found the cancer. The Spirit is blowing, and I am blessed that they found it.

There is something they can do, and that is a blessing as well. As the specialist told us, if this happened 10 years ago, I wouldn't be here. The treatments have come so far in a short time. And I know that there will be more breakthroughs as we move forward.

I do have to admit that there are times I am very frustrated, angry, and depressed that the cancer has come back. Once again, I thought we had this licked, at least for awhile longer, and I never expected it to go to the brain. But even more frustrating is the double vision and no answer for it.

But even in all of those down times I know I am blessed because there is something that can be done. So go about my daily life, celebrating what I have, doing the work I love, and preparing for the next steps that I need to take.

Prayers are always welcome, I will post more as things develop.

So...I get to have my brain zapped

 

So once again I have a health update for everyone via my blog.

I have to admit, I am getting tired of this, but it is what is happening right now.

So a couple of months ago I started to get some double vision. I wasn't sure what was going on, so I saw two eye doctors and the general thought was that I needed prisms for my glasses. I tried it, and it didn't work. So back to the eye docs for more tests.

Two weeks ago we discovered a build up of fluid behind my eye. It was believed that there was some scar tissue that built up there from when the cancer was behind my eye. That scar tissue was not letting the fluid drain, and so I got a build up of fluid that affected my vision.

So to fix this I had a shot in my eyeball, which was a treat let me tell you. The thought was after one week everything would be back to normal.

It wasn't.

So last Friday I had a regular appointment with my primary doctor, the one who discovered the cancer the first time. As we sat and talked she saw that my right eye was drooping. This was a sign for more tests and a meeting with the neurologist.

They got me in right away. He ran a few little tests, the had some blood drawn and scheduled me for an MRI.

With my fear of tight spaces, I was really not looking forward to that. But hey, you do what the doctors say.

So Monday morning I took my happy pills and went and had the MRI. The vision was still bad, but I was hoping for something.

I almost forgot - two weeks ago I had a PET Scan and everything was clean.

So today Jennifer and I went in to get the results of the MRI. Turns out I have a 1.2 centimeter spot on my cerebellum. It appears to be the cancer that has returned in the brain. The PET scan didn't get it because PET scans don't work on the brain.

But, this spot doesn't seem to be the cause of my eye issues. So I still have my double vision and no known reason for it.

We then went to see my radiation oncologist. He had been in touch with the lung cancer specialist in Madison. She has seen two or three cases like mine where the pill is working well in all of the body except the brain.

So the next step is to meet with a specialist in Madison. I will probably have a special type of radiation that focuses on this one spot. It is a one shot deal. They will go in on one day and blow up the spot. That should take care of it.

I will also have an appointment with my eye doctor in Madison to see if we can figure out what is going on with the double vision. I don't really like wearing my pirate patch.

Hopefully the radiation will take care of everything. They will do follow up MRIs but this is only one spot so they are very hopeful.

As always, prayers are appreciated.