I just read my last post. It's weird how you think that something was hard, then you fast-forward a couple weeks and realize that what you were going through previously wasn't all that hard compared to where it is now? Unfortunately that's where we're at.
So I tried and tried to get Jared to go on Topamax, but he was determined to just tough it out. We were actually able to enjoy a fun couple days for Spring Break in St. George, then the following week he was there again for work. He got back about a week and a half ago and that's about when his major migraine started. Usually he'll have a migraine, but it will go away after a while after taking some medicine. This one wasn't going away. It started last Sunday. Monday he was flat on his back all day. Tuesday he forced himself to go to work, but called me a couple hours later to pick him up. He was NOT doing well. I told him to call his doctor and he picked up his cell and couldn't even figure out how to dial the number. He also threw up all over the bed and didn't even realize it. At that point I had talked him into going on Topamax. He decided that as much as he felt like he couldn't function on Topamax, that level of functioning was greater than this level of functioning. So I called the doctor and they called in the prescription, which he started taking that night. Wed. the migraine continued, Thurs. the same, and he knew he had to go to work Friday. He had some meetings he said he couldn't miss, but didn't know how he was ever going to pull it off. I managed to get a migraine pill, made sure it was safe with all his other meds, and he took it Thurs. night. He had a little relief, but the migraine was still there Friday when he went to work. He lasted a miraculous 4 hours, but started throwing up, and I went to get him. I again called the doctor's to see if we could get some actual migraine medication. The PA, Shawn, called and asked me what was going on, and insisted that he bump his steroid dose way up, and said he should be feeling better the following day, and told me to call him with an update Saturday. When the migraine still wasn't gone Saturday evening, I called Shawn back. He told me that I needed to take him into the ER to get a migraine shot, but also told me to insist on an MRI while I was there since we had one coming up in a couple days anyway (he didn't necessarily think the MRI was needed, he just said we might as well). So we headed up to the ER at about 7:00 Saturday night. The doctors in the ER were going to send us home without the MRI, but we pushed it a little, so they gave in. We didn't know it was going to take so long! He did get the headache concoction, so he started getting some relief. A little later they added morphine, which helped even more. He said his pain was finally down to about a 4 - the lowest it had been in a week!
We got the results of the MRI at about 1:30am (me knowing that I have to teach a class that I haven't prepared for at 9:30 in the morning!), the doctor said that there was extreme swelling in his brain and told us we needed to sky-rocket his dose of steroids back to the maximum dose (he had slowly tapered himself down to a 1/2 mg/day and they pushed it back to 16mg/day). They also said there was sign of new cancer/tumor activity. I think we both turned our brains off after that sentence. It was so late and I just didn't care to process it. We also knew we had an upcoming appointment with the oncologist to discuss everything, so we didn't push for anymore information.
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| Someone was obviously excited for his cake! (He insisted on a cake that looks like a wheel.) |
Sunday (yesterday) was Drew's B-day, so we tried to keep a big smile for his big day. He had been counting how many "sleeps til his birthday" for quite a while. So we tried to enjoy ourselves. And Jared was feeling the best he had in quite a while, and could actually carry a normal, coherent conversation, which was a nice change.
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| Happy Birthday Drewy! |
Today has been another rough one. The headache is tolerable, but he is completely out of it. He couldn't figure out how to turn off the alarm this morning, he fell in the bathroom when he was trying to get ready for work, he walks like he's drunk, and he tried to text his brother and wrote something that looked like Averie had gotten the phone, and he told me he thought he had written "just tell me when and where." So I obviously didn't let him go to work.
I honestly don't know what to think or expect at this point. I really hope that this is temporary. I don't know that the doctors will have any answers in the morning, I don't know if it will get better, I don't know what the course of action will be (although I'm pretty sure they are going to recommend surgery - something I'm not thrilled about jumping into when he's already doing so horribly).
But the biggest frustration is that the radiosurgery only "bought" two months!!?? We both really thought it would be longer - 5, 6, 7, even 8 months? This is really discouraging, to say the least.
I will report again once we hear what the oncologist has to say in the morning.
