Keeping you and CMM in my thoughts and prayers. I hope that the surgeon will do the surgery and remove the tumor and then on to chemo. It sounds like his chances are good to have this done.
Please take care of yourself.
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
Thanks all. It's not an issue if the difficulty of surgery so much as whether it will improve outcomes. In the past it wasn't thought to improve outcomes unless the tumor was small. Newer evidence on using chemo with surgery suggests it does improve outcomes.
CMM is a good cook and a pretty clean eater so my diet is actually improved. The last two weekends have been full of stressful errands and taxes but this weekend is open and we plan to fill it with fun things - wine tasting, comedy club etc. I have a lot of support. Fortunately I am really good at just putting one foot in front of the other.
I used my DB skills this morning in helping CMM craft a reply to one of his daughters. He's well intentioned but I've learned so much here about the importance of validation. His default position is defensiveness but that invalidates the apologies his girls want for the pain and havoc the divorce caused in their lives. I had to walk him through writing a message that validated their pain and gave a true apology without defensiveness. It's sad to think that just because he lacked that simple skill things have deteriorated so much with his girls. He really is a good guy who wanted to do the best for his girls and tried to make up for the things their mom was lacking as they grew up.
Thanks Ginger. I am definitely going to try to get him past this impasse with his daughters. I mean, the reality is, while I am hopeful for a better outcome, he could also be dead in a year, and I wouldn't want his daughters to live with that unresolved. That would be awful.
So, CMM update, Friday's appointment with the surgeon was scary. Apparently the main pulmonary artery goes through the tumor so a simple lobectomy is not possible - they would have to take the entire left lung. (Because if you just took the upper lobe with that artery in the tumor you'd be removing the blood supply to the rest of the lung).
This surgery has a 5-7% chance of dying within 30 days of the surgery (from the surgery itself or complications of the surgery). Compare that to 1% for a coronary bypass.
However chances for 5-year survival go up with surgery, from about 25% with just chemo/radiation to about 50% when you add in surgery. And apparently quality of life isn't bad even without half your lung if you don't have lung disease on the other side (he doesn't). I personally would have a very hard time making that decision to have surgery but he is leaning toward it.
I don't know yet if they will do chemo and/or radiation before the surgery. I'm secretly hoping that between chemo and all the adjunctive things I have him on, the tumor might shrink enough to change the surgery options. That would be a small chance but stranger things have happened. Right now I have him on almost everything that has any research as helpful for lung cancer: LDN, metformin, medicinal mushrooms, resveratrol, curcumin, alpha lipoic acid, hydroxycitrate, medical marijuana, colostrum, and am waiting on my order of Avemar.
This is always such a hard decision with CA patients - and others I'm sure. I was talking with a longtime female friend of mine this weekend who has been battling stage 4 lung CA for about 18 months now. She's already surpassed the median one survival and is getting close to doubling it. Never smoked a single cigarette or anything in her life - still... In her case, all of the rather aggressive treatment and the many side effects that go with it have extended her life - and with decide quality as she was out at an Oktoberfest when I spoke with her. Not the case for a guitar player friend of mine who first started with symptoms about a year ago, was diagnosed in mid-October with Stage 3b and was dead by January 5th. In his case, his life was neither extended nor the quality improved with all of the treatment he went through. It's such a hard "guess" to know what to do.
I was really surprised to read your comment about the 30 day survival rate for CABG. I was then totally shocked when I read one study that showed that the 30-day mortality decreased from 4.07% in 1999–2000 to 2.44% in 2011–2012. So at least this one study shows it at nearly two and a half percent. For some reason I thought it was much lower than that. Clearly I was mistaken. Still, if it were me and I had the chance of being one of the 92 people out of 100 that survive the surgery and had a good chance at a longer quality of life, I think I'd opt for the surgery as well.
CMM is very lucky you came into his life. I know if it were me, I'd rather go through something like this with a loving, caring new female friend, girlfriend, whatever, than by myself. Bonus if said lady had solid medical knowledge. It's great you are stayng with him and helping him like this kml. You just really never know where life will take you.
DonH Midwest Me 56 WAW-EXW 55 Met 11/95 / Married 5/00 Bomb 6/20/05 / She Filed on 6/2/06 / Divorced on 10/9/06 4 who'd qualify as GF since D & dated about 25 women since D
Yes, Don, that's another part of the hard decision - what if he's going to be that guy that is dead in 6 months - does he want to spend two of those months in pain recovering from lung surgery? Still, there are newer drugs on the market that aren't factored into the existing survival data because they've only been around a few years or are still in clinical trials. They may hold the key to a better outcome. We await the genetic testing on the tumor cells which may help direct his chemo.
We are trying to get out and enjoy life when we can - a little difficult because I have such a busy schedule already between work and other responsibilities. This weekend we took my mom and older son wine tasting, and went to a movie (Crazy Rich Asians which I had been expecting to be this hilarious funny movie but was really just a chick flick romance with a couple funny parts). But part of the weekend had to be spent on practical errands and medical research. I'm making sure lots of good sex is part of the equation because that has to be healing, right?
CMM update: Oncologist appointment today. Upshot is - he'll have a biopsy of some additional nodes within the week. If those are positive too, then he qualifies for a clinical trial. The trial involves chemo first (and hopefully he'll get in the arm with Avelumab, one of the newer immunotherapy drugs) followed by surgery. My hope is that perhaps he might have a really good response and that the subsequent surgery might not have to involve taking the whole lung (note: this is MY hope, nobody is holding this out as likely, but I still think it might be possible). He's decided to do the surgery even though it likely involves taking the whole left lung and has a significant risk of dying from surgery (5-8%).
I'm working on getting him to send an update on his medical condition to his girls. He doesn't want to "burden them". I have to help him see that they deserve to know and the burden of him dying on them without them understanding the urgency of his condition (and hopefully reconciling) is not acceptable.
He really should send an update to his girls. They need to be aware of what their father's condition is, especially after the testing is completed. I hope that you can change his mind on this.
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
