Hi,
Last night, Eric had a small pneumothorax (hole in the lung) at the top of his left lung. It did not cause any problems with his ventilation status; he was still able to oxygenate and release CO2 well. However, it made the swelling go up in his chest, neck, and face. So this morning, they placed a chest tube. They were actually able to place it in the same exact spot where he had a chest tube from his car accident 8 years ago. The doctor said it was really easy to place because of it, since his scar made a nice target. : ) Hopefully, this will help with the swelling and with lowering the pressures required to inflate his lungs (since we're relieving the pressure building up directly outside of his lungs).
Sara's already updated everyone on his latest numbers. I just wanted to add a little clarification on the conversation with the hematologist last night. I think the normal course of therapy would be to give ATRA until his cell counts returned to normal, then only give it intermittently for several more months (approx 2 weeks every month). Patients normally undergo maintenance chemo as well, but I don't know the normal timeline for that. The hematologist was saying last night that they will check his blood for evidence of leukemia, and if there is none, he'll stop the daily dose of ATRA and give it intermittently, which is normal. He did say that he thinks Eric is too sick for more chemo, but we'll see how things pan out. Eric has the capability to surprise them all! We do know that his road to recovery will be long. It will take a while to get him off of the ventilator (they are talking about doing a tracheotomy), and it will take A LOT of physical therapy to build his muscles back up so that he can walk again. He is a very determined person, and I know he will work hard to become more independent again.
I guess for now, we're waiting to hear the results of the blood test. We're hoping for steady steps in the right direction!
Love,
Melissa
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Hey Melissa and Sara,
ReplyDeleteKeep hanging in there and don't be discouraged by the speculation that the second round of chemo might not be given. He still had time to build up his strength and will likely surprise everyone just like he's been doing!
I know when my brother was going through his chemo, keeping his nutrition up was HUGE in maintaining his health to be "healthy??" enough to receive the chemo. It was one small thing we felt like we could do to help out along such a long road. You might want to ask the doctor if there is any sort of nutritional supplement that he could take to help with this now that he is bouncing back. I know the supplement my brother was on was so successful the CC started putting other patients on it and decided to run a trial with it (I'll have to ask my mom what the name of it was). In the mean time, there might be something his doctors can recommend while he fights his way back! He's definitely on his way back so hang in there and *try* to be patient!
Sending healthy thoughts,
Kim Ringenberger
Hey guys! Hope today was a good day! The supplement was called Arginaid. It's an OTC supplement that was part of my brothers treatment. They used it to accelerate healing after his surgery to remove his primary tumor. They continued it throughout the remainder of his treatment program because it seemed to keep his health up. I don't know if this helps, but perhaps there is some sort of nutritional assistance that the doctor could recommend for Eric that could boost his healing progress. Just a thought. Hang in there!
ReplyDelete~Kim Ringenberger