Recap of the past week

As most of you know by now, my husband, Brian, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma on Nov 12th. These last few weeks have been a complete whirlwind of emotions, dr appts, tests, traveling, and everything else you can imagine. I will try to recap everything quickly so everyone is up to date so far and then I will try to add to this blog everyday or whenever I have time.

Friday, Nov 9: Brian had been complaining of stomach pain for the past 3 weeks at this point, he had gone to a CareNow facility one weekend and was prescribed some medication, but it had not helped. After he returned home from a business trip, he went to a specialist who thought he probably had ulcers. They scheduled a endoscopy on Friday (Nov 9) to make sure that it was only ulcers and not anything more serious. Seemed like a simple procedure, so neither of us were really concerned. When he awoke out of surgery they brought me in and told us that they found 8-10 very large polyps in his stomach that had lacerated and he had lost half of his blood. They went ahead and admitted him into the hospital so they could get his blood count back up, they ended up giving him 2 pints of blood on Friday and another 2 on Saturday. The drs also took some tissue from the polyps to do a biopsy, but still didn't think it was anything to be concerned about. We stayed in the hospital through the weekend while Brian underwent some more tests to try to determine if there were any other polyps. On Monday night, a dr came in to give us the biopsy results, the cells had tested positive as Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He had cancer... The dr continued to say that this was the most treatable cancer and is even curable, but it still doesn't get the word cancer out of your head. Our world had been turned upside down, we tried to stay strong, but still broke down and cried. Plus, after the dr told us, he released us to go home!! I don't know how we got home safely with the tears that were rolling down my face, it seemed like every song that came on the radio made me cry even more. We were given some booklets on lymphoma that we tried to read and educate ourselves on how our life would change.

Week of Nov 12: The following week Brian had doctor's appointments and more tests everyday. We began telling our family and friends although it still hadn't sunk in yet for us. We were numb and too busy with everything else to really think about it. We prayed about Brian's treatment and felt like it would be best to try to get accepted into MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. We knew the cancer Brian has is a very aggressive, fast acting cancer, and was already at the advanced stages. After a lot of prayer, phone calls, and paperwork, we finally recieved the news on Friday that Brian had been accepted into MD Anderson and had his first appt on Monday morning. We were so relieved that Brian would be in the hands of some of the best drs in the country that specialize in his specific cancer.