John Comes Home to His TV (and his wife)

John got home this evening and is looking forward to sleeping off his time in the hospital. He came home on oxygen, and the nice set-up man just left. He has an oxygen concentrator (which pulls oxygen out of the air instead of using a tank of liquid oxygen), and can fill 2 small tanks from that. Each will give him 2 hours worth of oxygen, so he can leave the house for 4 hours at a time. The oxygen should be a temporary thing. He's still holding over 15 pounds of water - as that comes off, we expect him to breathe much better. So he's on Lasix to get the water off.

Biopsy results should be in any day now; as soon as we have it chemo will start. In the meantime John's job is to get rested up. Jethro will stay at the vet until Friday, when we will begin the adventure of having a puppy and oxygen equipment in the same house. We have lots of extra tubing in case he decides to chew it. And there's always duct tape. He'll be so absorbed in Daddy that it may take him a while to notice anything else; John will have a lap full of 50 pounds of excited dog!

What John is most excited about is having our home satellite TV and his own bed. He's enjoying the first and is ready to try the second. So we're off to sleep. Have a good night, everybody!

The Burg Cavalry Arrives Just in Time

Hi, everybody!

Sorry about the news gap - there just hasn't been any news until today. John got his chest tubes out today, got up and walked in the hall 3 times, and will go home tomorrow if his chest X-ray is okay in the morning. His left pleural space seems nicely cleaned out; we hope this will put an end to the twice-weekly pleural effusions. We don't have word back on the biopsy yet. Results should come in some time this week, but may be as late as early next week. I'll pass it on as soon as we know something. When we find out what we're dealing with they will start chemo ASAP.

For those of you that have been worrying, I'm doing fine. I'm not staying at the hospital too much - for one thing, John won't take naps when I'm there. It seems he likes to talk to me. Who knew. ;) So I've been ducking in and out so he can get rested up a bit. I'm eating and sleeping and all that good stuff, and feeling fine. The Goshen Hospital food is very good, and they have a by-the-pound salad bar. Today they had cookies, jigsaw puzzles, and conversation in the lounge for families, so I met a few people and got some puzzle time in. And ate a sugar cookie straight from the oven.

Thanks so much for all your messages, calls, and cards. They help more than you can ever know.

And special thanks to Jim & Audora Burg, who came over today and mowed the lawn, trimmed some bushes, and rescued the flower beds from the weeds. (I can't mow for the rest of the summer because of the broken collarbone.) It took a lot of courage to face our yard. It was a mess. And gluten-free chocolate cake is wonderful; Andy is right. Thanks so much!

I'm off to bed, so to all a good night. Love you all!

John Will Finally Get Fixed

Good evening! I'm here at a more reasonable time today.

John was admitted to Goshen Hospital this morning with another pleural effusion, had a liter and a half drained from his left lung, and feels much better. He still has a good bit of left-over blood and clots from the biopsy, so on Friday he'll have surgery to get it all cleaned out. This should put a stop to this cycle of going into the hospital twice a week, which would be very good.

He will be taking a LOA from work, since he may have to take a few weeks off to recover from the surgery. If we pick up the extra cost during the LOA he will keep his insurance - a clear priority right now! The financial picture isn't so good. But none of us have had good financial news in ages, so we're used to that, right?

John will be in the hospital for about a week this time, so I'll call the vet in the morning and get Jethro boarded for that time. Then I won't have to worry about getting home before his bladder reaches it's puppy-limit, and he won't be depressed about why Daddy's not home. Being boarded is vacation time for him. (June, if you read this tonight, I'll be calling you in the morning!)

I'll keep you all posted. Have a good evening!

John Causes Difficulties

Good morning, all! I hope I'm the only one up at this hour, and all of you are safely in bed asleep.

We've had another interesting week. Last Tuesday John had his lung biopsy done, but not without some excitement. First he had to have another 2 liters of fluid drained from his left lung. Then the biopsy itself got a bit messy. The tumor is in the left upper lobe, in the hilar region (near the center of the chest), which is quite vascular. So he did a lot of bleeding - coughed up about 1/3 of a unit of blood, and had quite a bit build up in his pleural space, which had just been drained. Blood is a very concentrated fluid - lots of cells, lots of proteins and things in the serum - so it draws fluid to itself. So Thursday night I took him in to the Goshen ER with another effusion which was drained on Friday, and was quite bloody. They drained all they could, but there was still quite a bit of bloody drainage left in the base of his left lung when he came home on Saturday, so tomorrow morning he will likely be going back to get drained again. This time they will probably insert a chest tube, which is more invasive and uncomfortable but does a much better job of completely draining the space around a lung. Hopefully, that will be that. When he has an effusion it gets big enough to restrict the filling of his heart, so he gets a lot of swelling in his feet and legs, and it presses on his ribs, which causes quite a bit of pain. So he's very ready to get this taken care of.

The good thing about all of this is that it got him into the system at the Goshen Hospital Cancer Center. It is an hour closer than the doctor we'd been referred to in South Bend, and is one of the best cancer centers in the world. We were determined to get transferred to Goshen, but his ER admission took care of that for us. We are very happy with the doctor he is seeing, and with the fact that they are beginning to work with him before the biopsy results are back. Those results will tell us which of 3 possible mutations has caused the cancer, and will determine chemo choice. But nutritional and lifestyle needs are the same no matter what, so we're getting started with that now.

Other that that, we're in the middle of a terrible heat-&-humidity stretch, when even the dog doesn't want set foot (paw?) outside. My flower beds are a mess, but they'll keep until the weather breaks next week. Nobody is outside to see them anyway. Thank goodness for AC!

Sleep well, everybody! We'll keep you posted.

I Have Good News & Bad News

Hello, friends!

We both saw our doctors today. My news is good, John's not so much. My collarbone is healing - slower than my doctor expected, but that happens after the half-century mark. I'm cleared to do whatever doesn't hurt. I'm having some vertigo when I move my head certain ways. It seems that the impact agitated my cochlear area, and it will take a few months to pass. In the meantime, I shouldn't move my head in those ways. I love my doctor; he's so wonderfully down-to-earth. But what would you expect from a man who had paper-trained iguanas as pets?

John saw his oncologist, and to the doctor's and everyone's surprise, he has stage 4 adenocarcinoma in his left lung, almost certainly another complication of the radiation he got when he was 19. There is a mass about 3 1/2 centimeters across in his left upper lobe (which caused the pleural effusion), and metastasis to his ribs and hip bones (which explains the persistent pain in his left side). The medical among you understand this; for the rest of you, I recommend lungcancer.about.com. It's concise, accurate, and in English. First, this is not small-cell lung cancer - it is more treatable than that. Second, lung cancer among non-smokers falls into 3 types. Each type has a slightly different prognosis and a very different treatment. So next Tuesday he will have a needle-aspirate biopsy of the mass to determine which type he has. After 2 weeks for the labwork to come back, he'll meet with his oncologist and make treatment plans.

Life will continue as normal around here, at least for a while. Just because he has the diagnosis doesn't mean that he feels bad all of a sudden. He'll keep working, and his boss will adjust his schedule as needed if chemo is planned. As long as he averages 25 hours worked per week, we'll keep our insurance and all will be well. Except, of course, for the insurance company, who must be wishing they had never heard of any Hockmans!

As far as prognosis goes, here are the stats - remember that they have no meaning when it comes to one case, only to large groups. This kind of cancer has a 10% 5-year survival rate, and only half of the patients are alive 9 months after diagnosis. John is on the good end of that, because he is relatively young and is active and in good health otherwise. And we've had ample time the last couple of months to realize that our lives are in God's hands always. On May 31st I did a low-risk thing (going to the dentist), and wound up in a mess. I was in a high-risk situation (not breathing for 5 minutes), and came out fine. Our times are not in our hands, and the Lord's ways are not known to us. It doesn't have to make sense. There won't be a test on it!

We ask, as always, for your continued prayers. We will keep all of you updated when we know more. Thanks for caring about us!