Cancer diagnosis

Where to begin? First things first, cancer SUCKS! It screws up your life and your loved ones lives, whether it be for a short amount of time or possibly indefinitely. There is this constant state of fear, anger, hope and it’s a lot of ups and downs, twists and turns, like a roller coaster.

My amazing husband, Bob, was diagnosed in January 2015 at the age of 30. It wasn’t like he had symptoms for a while and we were trying to figure out what was going on, he had symptoms for only 2 weeks. He explained his symptoms were like he was hanging upside down from the monkey bars and just that feeling of the blood rushing to your head and taking awhile for the blood to go back. He’s a police officer so he figured it was his vest so he loosened it thinking that would help. After the first week and it not helping he called his dr to make an appointment. He worked New Years Day his overnight shift, came home slept for a few hours and then went to his dr appointment (Jan 2, 2015). He told his dr about the vague symptoms and his dr didn’t really know either but sent him for some X-rays. X-rays showed some enlarged lymph nodes so they sent him to Mercy ER for a CT scan which discovered a 10cm mass in front of his heart. He called me to tell me and I headed up as soon as my mother in law got to my house to watch the kids. I prayed/cried the whole way there that it was nothing or something that could be fixed easily. When I arrived I saw our Priest talking with Bob. As soon as he got off the phone with me he called him. The Drs asked if he wanted to speak with someone but they didn’t have a Priest so he told them, “no, that’s not going to help me out” and called Fr. Fallon. He prayed with us and gave Bob an anointing of the sick.

On the 5th of January, Bob had a mediastinoscopy done to see what exactly this was.

The 9th we got the results over the phone that he had Primary Mediasteinal diffuse large b-cell lymphoma stage 2A.

12th we had a dr appt and we were told this is treatable and curable! Yay, for positive thoughts.

14th they placed his power port, 15th he had a PET scan, 16th was an echocardiogram

16th went to ER because symptoms were getting worse. Apparently at our dr appointment we were supposed to get a steroid prescription but didn’t.

17th he had his first chemo.

Those 15 days had a lot going on and it seemed never ending. The next 10 months to follow were basically like these last 15 days, lots of back and forth to the hospital, a few ambulance rides, several ER trips, 3 different hospitals, lots of medications and seemed like non stop driving. I would continue to write every single thing that happened over the last 10 months but I will sum it up otherwise it will just get to be insanely long. Plus my husband was a much better writer than me and already wrote most things on his Tumblr which I highly suggest that you read. It’s amazing and his faith in God was amazing.       http://bobbyhay.tumblr.com

Bob finished 4 rounds of chemo and had another PET scan and the tumor shrunk from 10cm down to 4cm! Two more rounds and then he was to start radiation. The radiation scan came around and it showed that the tumor grew again and it was now at 6cm. Now, radiation is off the table and on to a different type of chemo.

Guess what? That chemo didn’t work. On to a different, more aggressive type of chemo and then hopefully a stem cell transplant. Guess what? Chemo didn’t work again and now the cancer was at 11cm. Bigger than it was when he was diagnosed. Now we had to switch hospitals and on to Barnes we went for hopefully a clinical trial. Guess what? His counts weren’t high enough for a clinical trial so we attempted this other type of chemo that his body hadn’t seen. You guessed it, it didn’t work. 4 types of chemo and they all failed. The last option that was thrown to us was these pills that could take longer to work. We obviously said yes, what other choice did we have? The appointment we had with the oncologist before he started the pills, his tumor was measuring 12cm x 11cm and he had enlarged lymph nodes under his arm pits. 2 1/2 weeks after he was on the pills his tumor was measuring 7cm x 4cm and the lymph nodes under his arm pits had shrunk too! It was awesome news.

Unfortunately his body had been through so much, he had drains in both lungs, had to have fluid around his heart drained, ended up on oxygen, got pneumonia and just got really weak. We were told on Oct. 26th, 2015 that even though the mass did show that it shrunk there was part of the tumor that wasn’t visible without a scan that had wrapped around his spine and at that point there was nothing they could do. Never did he give up, he always thanked God for another day and prayed daily. He continued telling me what to do up until the end. He already made sure over the last 10 months to have everything in place for me if something happened. He even wrote letters to the kids and I. Here’s what I wrote on my facebook page the day that Bob passed, October 27th, 2015:

“Thank you everyone for your prayers and kind words. I was fortunate enough to have had the past almost 11 years of dating and 5 years of marriage with the greatest man I’ve ever met. He gave me the best gifts I could have asked for by making me his wife and then a mom of the two most amazing little boys. Please keep Logan, Caleb and I in your prayers and please pray for Bob’s soul.
One of our amazing nurses, Charlotte, brought us communion on Sunday and he received his last rites yesterday. Bob Michael and I spent last night and this morning praying together. He wasn’t able to speak because of his breathing tube but he would read some prayers to himself and then point to which prayers he wanted me to say and I would say them out loud. Our friend, Bill Cappel was there for some of this and Bob asked him to pray the stations of the cross with me. He would tell us things by pointing to the letters of the alphabet on the sheet that one of our other amazing nurses, Karen Rider, found for us. He kept his sense of humor through out all of this with some of the things he “wrote”. Bob wanted to make sure I knew everything to do and made me write down a list by him pointing to every letter. He was still helping me up to the end so I didn’t have to make all these decisions alone. He’s seriously the best.