As you all know or may not know, Chris has been battling this beast called colon cancer since Oct of 2016. These past few weeks have been extremely the most difficult ones that we have had.
In Nov he spent 4 days in the hospital due to not feeling well, sugar over 300 and retaining water. While at this stay they discovered a mass growing on the left artery going from the kidney to the bladder, similar to what happened on his right side this summer. They put a stent into the left and were able to get one into his right side due to a few rounds of chemo that helped to shrink the mass. The left stent worked great but the right one still did not allow the flow to happen so he has had to keep his urostomy bag (bag urine flowed into). It was also discovered that he the congestive heart failure that started a few months earlier was getting worse. The oncologist restarted chemo but only at 80% as his body was not handling the full dose. He received one of these treatments and his liver enzymes started to elevate. They cannot continue chemo if these enzymes are high. The next few weeks were spent on trying to lower these, control the excess water weight that the heart failure was producing all while keeping his sugar under control.

True to Chris form, he also was taking time trying to figure out if the “now” pain was from the previous stent surgery or something new. So he was not quick in letting the doctor know. Also, the holidays were coming and that was on his mind. We did have a wonderful Christmas and was able to spend it with family and downtime at home. The day after Christmas, Chris had an oncology appointment and due to his extremely high liver enzymes, they admitted him into the hospital.

This stay was for 5 days where he received a stent placed in the liver duct. The CT scan showed that the end of this duct had an obstruction and needed to be opened to allow proper flow. We battled very low blood sugars during this stay because Chris had taken his long activating diabetes med before going into the hospital. Therefore they had to give him lots of IV fluids with sugar to keep it up. If anyone knows Chris, they know that he loves OJ and can never have it. Well, he received so much OJ that he actually got tired of it. That one threw his son for a loop. They let him go home on New Year’s Eve.
From all the fluids from the previous stay, he started to retain an excessive amount of water and it kept coming over the next 5 days. Back to the oncologist and back into the hospital. This time was for 10 days. During this time they worked on the excessive water by using IV Lasix and a surgery to see if the previous liver stent was collapsed. During that surgery, they could not see the stent due to the cancer that had grown but from the scans taken it showed that it was open. While in there they discovered a mass growing on part of his intestine that was closing it off and not allowing his food to go through. They placed a stent here as well. After a few days of monitoring his liver enzymes and not seeing them go down, they wanted to go back in and add a balloon in the liver stent and a drainage tube that allows for the fluid to drain into an external back similar to his urine one. They also removed 1.5 liters of fluid (water) from his lungs and .5 liters from his stomach. Then on Thursday as a last effort to make sure all was working properly they did dye through both to make sure there was adequate flow. Both showed they were wide open, so this rules them out as being the cause of the high enzymes. That leads the doctors to believe that it’s the cancer growing in the liver.

We had a long discussion with the doctors on Thursday evening that there is nothing else they can do for him except pain management at home. We went home on Friday morning with the help of an ambulance as Chris is having difficulty walking due to the water weight in his legs. Hospice met us in the afternoon. WOW, what a wonderful service! After a long discussion, it was decided to wait on their services until we had our last blood labs Monday morning. Our oncologist who is so amazing and not giving up wanted to see where Chris’s liver enzymes are after a full weekend of being back at home with rest. If the enzymes are high it’s unsafe to have chemo. If they are lower, there is one part of his chemo treatment that he can have that is given in a low dose over a 3 week course. Dr. Berger has been our rock during this nightmare and we trust in him. He has had the discussion with Chris on quality of time versus quantity. Again, only Chris will know this, but Dr. Berger said he would back him in whatever direction Chris decided. This doctor would have a long day of patients at the Cancer Center which is not attached to the hospital and would still stop by to see Chris on his way home sometimes 7:00 at night. He would take the time to chat with us and let us know where the treatment is. He would always “give it me straight doc” as Chris would say to him. They have a special connection that I have not seen Chris have with any other doctor. He would say that Dr. Berger “got him.”

I will leave an update on Monday as to what the labs show and what we have decided as far as our next step. I know this was an extremely long update but I wanted to get everyone caught up. We should have started this a while ago, but everyone knows how private Chris is. It’s only recently that he is allowing me to do this and I needed to respect his wishes. I’ll try to leave the other updates much shorter.
Thank you again everyone, for your well wish, support, prayers, and love. We may not always express it but we are truly thankful for it.