Dina ~ Post 6th Chemo

It has not been good friends...Dina in bed all weekend, just not feeling good.  And then to top it off, our littlest buddy gets sick...coughing coughing coughing...constantly!  (kind of like me, very annoying...although, now that I type this, I am NOT coughing very much this morning at all!!).  Jamie was being a GREAT daddy and doing his best to keep Jalen out of Dina's room...and you know he is a Mommy's boy and loves to snuggle and give hugs and a million kisses...so this is hard on him, but he actually understands the importance of why he can't be near her when he is sick.

Friday morning when Dina left for her chemo, Scott headed over to stay with Jalen (I was still in bed!)  When I went over there at 10 am, Jalen was coughing and it did not sound good.  I knew that we could NOT send him to school.  Nana was coming to the house to do her weekly cleaning, washing, etc of Dina's house, so he stayed with Nana (after they went out and bought 25 balloons to celebrate the end of this round of chemo)  When Jamie came home about 3, he immediately took Jalen up to the theater room and stayed up there all night, even convinced Jalen that a "camp-out" would be fun up there!  But then after a bit, Jamie could NOT stay on the hard floor any longer, so he tried to sneak away.  It didn't take long for Jalen to realize his daddy was gone, so he gets up and goes to their bedroom...hacking and coughing...so Jamie gets up and takes him into Ellie's bed (who is NOT home, she was having a sleepover with a friend) and Jamie and Jalen sleep (or NOT) in the double bed...Dina could hear Jalen coughing all night long...no sleep for anyone!

Saturday, Jamie and Ellie had a couple of basketball games scheduled and Dina was still in bed not feeling well, so we thought we would take Jalen to lunch and go see Ellie's game.  Well, that little guy was coughing so much we decided it would not be a good idea to go to the game, but we did take him to his favorite place to eat:  Panda Express!!  He gets orange chicken and rice!  As he was eating I asked him what he would like to do after lunch (knowing we needed to keep him out of the house so Dina could rest and also so that I would NOT have to spend hours playing Xbox or Wii with him!! ha ha!) and you will not believe his answer!  He said, "Maybe go to a store and look at clothes!"  OMG, He is is Father's son!!!  Yes, we took him to "Dick's Sporting Goods" because he informed us that he had to give Tristan his very favorite basketball shorts, so Papa thought maybe we could find a new favorite short at that store!  And guess what?  We did!!

After 2 1/2 hours we brought him home and when we walked into Mommy's bed room, guess what we saw?

Mommy and Lacey hanging out together in the bed...they were watching a movie and looking for new hats on the Ipad...the Snooks are planning a trip to Arizona...Dina is thinking maybe knit hats will be a bit too hot for the Arizona sun!!

Even not feeling well, white as a ghost, our Dina still puts on a smiley face for us!  She is so strong and amazing, I am really proud of her.  I know that Friday was an emotional day for her...she made it to the last chemo....is it the last?  She is afraid, but as we talked she told me from the very beginning she was trusting, but it is the waiting that is the hardest and gives her too much time to think and worry...did it work?  what comes next?

Well, Monday came and she called the doctor's office early, they rescheduled her velcade infusion so she went in earlier than normal...she had the velcade and the blood draw and again her red count was very low, so they sent her to the outpatient in the hospital and she had a blood transfusion.  She was gone 6 hours!  She has been worried about the blood transfusion and not wanting to do it, but this is important.  She still felt yucky in the evening, but was hopeful that Tuesday will bring a better day!  We are hoping that it is a turning point for her also...but I think she is scheduled for a white cell booster shot and sometimes with the combination of white and red cell shots her bones ache and throb!  Maybe with the transfusion, it will be minimized!

We really want her to be well for Sunday as our church has been selling Team Dina gear at all the Masses for the last three weeks...I think they have sold A LOT!  And everyone is going to wear their Team Dina gear (or any purple clothing) to the 11 am Mass on this Sunday, Feb 3 to show support for Dina...it is just amazing how many people are embracing her and sending up prayers for healing.  She is truly blessed and we are blessed to be living in such a loving and giving community.  Father Bill is going to do a special blessing of the sick...for everyone and anyone!  All are welcome!  If you can join us, please do so...it is Resurrection Catholic Church on the corner of Ek and Stafford Rd.  Mass starts at 11 am!

Thank you so much for your continued prayers and love that you are showing the family!

Lacey update:  doing good...just a few twinges of pain periodically, but she says she is back to normal...no more pain pills and she will have the stent removed on Wednesday!

Me:  the UTI is back!!!  I finished my antibiotics on Friday...had a good weekend, feeling like I beat this thing finally (only lasted 6 weeks!), but woke up Monday morning and knew immediately it was back with a vengeance!  The plan now is to see my urologist!

Psalm 29:11  The Lord gives His people strength, the Lord blesses them with peace.

We are in good hands!!

Friday, January 25 Dina took her 6th CHEMO

She did it!  We were not sure, with the fever she was running we were not positive that she could do her last scheduled chemo, but her temperature was down and they hooked her up.  Her red cell count was extremely low...from being sick, they suspect she may have to have a transfusion next week.  She goes in on Monday for a blood draw and also for her trial infusion.  They will let her know then if it would be best to get a blood transfusion.  They did give her a red cell booster shot today before starting her chemo treatment.  Lacey picked her up at 8 am and brought her to the Compass Oncology site.  Scott and I came about noon with lunch for the two of them and then Jamie came for the last hour.  She was done at 2 PM.  You can tell she does not feel well, she definitely has NO color in her cheeks today...very pale.  We hope that will improve as time goes and she starts to feel better.

She was sitting in the middle of this long narrow room.  Chairs are lined up all along the window, in the middle like where she is sitting and also a few on the other side.  The nurses station is to the right of where Dina is sitting.  When we first arrived the room was fairly full, then it cleared out.  Some can get in and out in only a few hours...Dina takes 5 different drugs, so they take it slower.

The doctor came out and talked to us...now it is a waiting a game...30 - 40 days to make sure the drugs are in her body and killing off all those cancer cells.  Then they will do the PET and CT scans to see where things are...we are praying for complete remission.  If not, then another biopsy will required and then possibly a bone marrow transplant...we will cross that bridge when we get to it.  Our HOPES and prayers are for complete remission!

Jamie's mom, sister and Jalen (who was home sick with a bad cough) went to the store and bought a couple dozen purple and lime green ballons and tied them at the top of their driveway, coming down the drive and all around the front porch and also several clusters inside the house.  A group of her friends came by with a lovely poster on the front door wishing her good luck and congrats on completing the 6th chemo.  Unfortunately she is feeling sick today.  Usually she is a little tired, but not sick after the chemo...today is different...I am sure running a fever the last couple of days has really taken a lot out of her...let's hope she can bounce back quickly.

ps...a Lacey update...she is doing good, maybe a little uncomfortable with the stent in her, but no more pain.  She will get the stent out next Wednesday, then she will feel really good!

pps...the oncologist asked how I was feeling and I told him, I still have pain, still can't sleep for long on my left side, still can't wear a bra (I am not complaining about that!!  good thing it is sweatshirt time!!  ha ha), and that the breast feels swollen and tender...he says, "I know, they tell you a month or two...well, it is actually longer than that and could even be a year!!  (are you kidding me?)...there are a LOT of nerves in the area where they had to probe and go in and cut out the lobe...so some nerves may never come back.  Of course it doesn't help that I still have this blasted cough.  Scott tells me that I am not coughing much during the night now, so that is good!

Can I just share my fear with you?  Scott asked the doctor why they wait so long to do the PET scan (30 - 40 days) because it seems like you would want to keep doing something if 6 didn't work.  His answer was that there is NO evidence that doing more than 6 chemo actually helps...in fact if it is not gone by 4, then chances are even if you did 8 or more, it still would not kill it off...something about your body building up resistance to those drugs.  And if you have to do a bone marrow transplant, then doing a couple more chemo treatments is actually detrimental to the effectiveness of the bone marrow...Do you understand what I am saying?  She still had some lymphoma after the 3rd chemo...did the FOURTH chem really kill off the remaining?  He was somewhat hopeful that is the case with Dina, but then again, he said if it wasn't all gone by the 4th treatment, then it probably wouldn't be gone...Prayers, friends, that is what we need!

"A mother who walks with God knows He only asks her to take care of the possible and to trust Him with the impossible."  We are trusting in Our Lord and God to heal Dina.

And a quote I read from a book called:  The Seed:  "...the worst event in your life prepares you for the greatest assignment of your life..."  God has a purpose for Dina and we are praying that her survival will be a testament to His love for her and hers for Him...she can go out and share her story and bring Jesus to others...please keep praying for her friends...Thank you.

This Journey Our Family is taking...

Sunday night Lacey was feeling some pressure in her bladder area...then through the night it came in the form of pain on her left flank...all while Tristan (her 3.5 year old) was in bed with her throwing up!) by the morning it was pretty intense as she curled on the kitchen floor in pain.  Aaron took her to the ER immediately as they suspected a kidney stone.  She was given some dilaudid for the pain and it was not lasting long enough.  She ended up with three doses of dilaudid and it did not give her much relief.  Finally the doctor thought a CT scan would be appropriate (they were super busy in the ER and had a code blue...so we were not top priority, but the nurse kept on top of Lacey's situation).  the Ct scan did indeed show a stone about 3mm, and because the dilaudid was not helping he switched to fentanyl...a powerful drug and that did indeed take away the pain.  So after 6 hours in the ER, Lacey thought she could go home...however, you cannot go home with fentanyl, so they prescribed percoset.  She was not home very long when it became evident that she could not handle the pain, so back to the ER she went so she could get an IV with the fentanyl.  She was admitted into the hospital (room 327...I will tell you a story about that room and why it is significant a little later) she saw the surgeon and they removed the stone about 9 pm that night.

We were back in the hospital with her in the morning and after eating something and walking with me, she was able to go home, about 11 am.  Once Lacey was dressed and given her discharge orders and a prescription, we were standing in the doorway with her nurse.  I turned to the nurse and said:  "My husbands father died in this room back in March".  The nurse looked at me and said, " What was his name?"  I told her "Bill Foelker".  She said, "Oh My gosh, I was the charge nurse for him!  I was doing a "Grey's Anatomy" run through the hospital with him.  Never before have I ever had to run with a hospital bed to get someone to the ICU."  I hugged her...brought tears to our eyes.  Bill was in good hands in the final moments and they were doing everything they could for him.

We brought Lacey home to her family...all the kids are home because they have ringworm!  Yes, even Lacey and Aaron had a spot or two.  Addie has the worst of it and they have been treating it for nearly a week.  We walk into the house and both the little ones are naked!  I tell Lacey they should wear clothes because I am sure they are just spreading the fungus.  Lacey had been washing the sheets and clothing every day trying to get rid of this ring worm...let's see if keeping clothes on will help!

Morning after kidney stone removal

 We had planned to take all the kids to lunch up at Oregon in order to use our quarterly dining dollars.  We decided to still go with Jamie and Dina and we will take Lacey's family one day next week.  We were doing it this week, because Dina is feeling really good and she has chemo this Friday and we know she will not be feeling so well after that, and we have to use up a certain amount of dollars in the dining hall before the end of the month.  We had lunch, but Dina did not eat very much at all and said she wasn't feeling very good, kind of getting "achy".  She was suppose to run a few more errands with Jamie delivering fruit to the yogurt stores (they had already been to Costco and to two of the four stores), but she asked if we would bring her home and Jamie would go by himself.  She crawled into her bed with the heating blanket because she was chilled.  Well, she started running a fever...at first just 99...then it went up to 101...then it spiked to 102.8.  She knows that fevers and chemo treatments are to be treated in haste...so she called her oncologist office and they told her to go to the ER as their lab was gone for the day.  This is just before 5 pm...

So Scott and I headed back to the ER and we saw the same doctor who treated Lacey and tell him now we are here with our other daughter.  They took blood from her port and then later took blood from her hand...it is good to draw from two sources in cases like this.  And then as you know, we wait and wait and wait.  They did an x-ray and that finally came back negative.  YEAH!  The blood work showed a great white cell count...so the doctor wondered how she could be sick!  They then did a "flu swab"...they put this long metal stick up into her nose...Dina asked,  "How far up do you stick it?"  The nurse replies, "Until you go 'ggllllkkk' like you are choking!!"  Yeah, that did not feel good at all, but they only had to do one nostril!  And the results came back negative for the flu...although in the culture 24 hours later (sometime tonight) it could show up positive.  So after 4.5 hours in the ER, they sent her home.  Her fever had come down was finally in the two digits, but then she started to get chills again and we put a 'warm blanket' on her and then she asked for my coat and her coat and she asked for me to cover up her head.  By the time we left the hospital, her fever was back up to 101.  The nurse gave her more Tylenol and told her to take it every six hours to keep the fever and aches at a minimum.  She had a restless night...hot, cold, chills, sweating etc.  And even now she is not feeling that great.  We just pray that this will break before Thursday so she can have her final chemo treatment on Friday!

 

 

Dina under the blankets and coats...she actually fell asleep!

A group of Dina's friends had planned a gathering this morning to say a "rosary" for Dina...just before her final chemo treatment.  Dina had to cancel on that, but we continue to ask for prayers for complete healing and remission of this cancer.

I would also like to ask for prayers for a couple of others in our parish..., a 71 year old very loving and spiritual person was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and only given a year to live.  She will take chemo treatments to try to prolong her life, I ask for prayers for a miracle.  Also a very young parishioner, I am not sure of her exact age, but maybe 6 or 7 has been diagnosed with something called HLH you a can google HLH (it is heartreaking) HERE to read just a little bit about it...and there are other sites from parents who are pleading for bone marrow donations.  When I read those stories, I am feeling really blessed by the journey we are taking...I know this is hard, and of course I surely pray that Dina will come out of this in complete remission and lead a normal life raising her three children.  I have written it before, it is not always easy to Trust in the Lord when it concerns your own children, but it is times like this that we are drawn closer to our Lord...we are given the opportunity to develop a deeper relationship with Him and that, my friends is what He wants from us.  He wants our Love and our Trust in His will.  Please join me in praying for ALL people who are going through difficult and life threatening events.  Please pray for them to NEVER lose faith in Our Lord...keep Him tucked into the deepest part of our soul and rely on His mercy and Love to sustain us through our struggles.  It is through these struggles that we manifest ourselves to others the Love, Faith and Trust we have in Our GOD!

Dina update

We are counting the days, folks!  14 more days until her FINAL (we are praying) chemo!  January 25 is the BIG day...but really 30 or 40 days later is the important one...the one where she will have the PET scan and we can see that everything is GONE!

Dina has had a rough week.  Even with the red platelet shot, she is having the symptoms of low red cells...dizzy and kind of blurry vision.  After the white cell booster shot on Tuesday her bones really ache for about three or four days...even her jaws hurt to touch!  Today is one week from the chemo and today is predicted the lowest count for red cells...she will have blood drawn on Monday and they can see how she is doing...she is hoping that by tomorrow it will go up by itself and she will not have the dizzy, blurry symptoms.  Today was just a lay around on the couch all day kind of day.  Her saint of a MIL was at her house ALL DAY cleaning, washing, mopping, everything and anything to help Dina out.  She has been doing this for Dina since the day we found out about her cancer.  And her FIL has a bouquet of flowers delivered every week...fresh flowers...beautiful bouquets...such a thoughtful and kind gesture!  They are those kind of people...giving and caring and they love Dina so much, it is heartbreaking for them to know she is going through this struggle.

Both Ellie and Lily have VB tournaments tomorrow...opposite directions naturally!  Scott coaches Lily's team, so he will take her bright and early and Dina is hoping she can get up and go North to watch Lily's  first two games, then go home and rest and head South in Salem to watch Ellie play...that is the plan...but she will do what she needs to do to take care of herself.  She does love watching the girls play though and she loves keeping her family life "normal"...a new kind of normal as it is!

I am still hanging on with this cough...really just annoying now...when I talk I cough...how annoying is that?  And unfortunately my urinary infection did not clear up, so I am back on antibiotics and the tummy just feels yucky!  HOWEVER, I am so much better and I am exercising every day to get my lungs back to good working order!

I never did post this picture from October 29...I started to count, but lost track...I think close to 100 people showed up at our church grounds to take this Group Picture of so many friends from the church and the community who are supporting Dina in this battle.  Dina's family is NOT in the picture because this was a surprise.  Amanda, who organized it, framed the picture in a BIG frame and everyone signed the mat around the picture.  Dina has it hanging in her house...Amanda also made a book for her with just random shots of families and friends together, it is really cool.  If you look close, you will see both my brothers and their wives, Kyle, Teale, my DAD, Lacey's whole family,  Jamie's parents, sister and children, nephews...and all the wonderfully kind people who are walking this journey with Dina and Jamie.  After the group photo, we went to Lacey's house and met Dina's family there and that is where Jamie shaved the heads of Lacey, Aaron, Caleb and Lily...all in support of Dina who had already shaved her hair due to the massive loss from the night before when she washed her hair.

I just can't thank you all enough for the prayers coming our way...I am on the mend, but my Dina could still use the prayers...we are not in the clear yet until we get the final results from the scans...thank you for the "persistent' prayers asking for complete healing.  I know our Lord is listening, we just have to trust in Him and pray that He has more work for Dina to do here...

The latest news...

I will start with Dina...some of you may have read the latest post on the Caring Bridge from Ellie, but if not, then I will share it here.  Dina had a CT scan last Friday and was told on Monday, New Year's Eve, that the scan showed the cancer 'stable'...now that is not the words we were praying for...we were hoping more of what we heard after her second chemo and PET scan...dramatically reduced.  However stable is good...it means no more growth, it just might mean no more decrease either.  Although to be fair, a CT scan is different than a PET scan...the PET scan will show ALL the activity, a CT kind of measures the disease.  On the "hopeful" side, the doctor was really positive about the results and said she is very close to remission.  Now that word we definitely like to hear!  She had her FIFTH chemo Friday, Jan. 4 and all went well.  She was chastised a bit by the doctor for not getting the blood transfusion, so he made sure she took the shot for the red cell booster (it is called something else...but I am a dummy when it comes to medical jargon!) also...hopefully this will alleviate the bone pain she experienced the last time.  She will have the trial drug infusion on Monday, the white cell booster shot on Tuesday and then wait until the 25th for her final chemo.  She will need to wait 30 - 40 days after her last chemo to take the PET scans and get the results...so that puts it around the beginning of March!  Keep the prayers coming her way!

Okay, now for news about me.  I am doing so much better in terms of the lungs and being able to move around.  However, I did get a urinary tract infection and went through three different kinds of drugs to clear it up.  The second set of drugs caused a lot of nausea and stomach cramping...all on Christmas Eve and Christmas day...I was in my PJ's until 4 PM on the Eve and I think I stayed in them all day on Christmas...Scott and I just watched movies from the Hallmark channel all day...Christmas movies that he had recorded.  Scott was feeling a bit under the weather those two days also...he caught a cold..sore throat running a low grade fever and generally achey all over.

And Bless his Heart, he shared it with me!  Yes, so now I am coughing, I am just glad that I have it NOW and not two weeks ago.   But there is light at the end of the tunnel...I can cough today without a lot of pain...yes still coughing...but I can tell it is better.

We did manage to go out and celebrate a BIG birthday on December 29...11 Years Clean and Sober for Lacey and 3 years for Aaron...Yahoo...such a blessing. 

the birthday couple!  What an achievement!  so proud of them.

And our sweet 'chemo girl' and husband!

 Thanks for taking a look...Dina is laying low this weekend, although she did go to Ellie's volleyball tournament and that was exhausting for her...so today, Sunday she was very tired and did just what she needs to do...NOTHING!