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Saturday 12 Jun 1999
Our worst fears were confirmed last Friday night - Paige has tumors that are growing.
She had seen Dr. Spirtos the prior week for a followup to the biospy procedure when things changed again. He was doing a normal female exam on her and conversing lightly, when all-of-a-sudden he dramatically changed his facial expression. He became more focused and had a look of distinct frustration and disappointment. My heart sank to the floor and my heart began racing. I felt like we'd just slammed on the brakes in a car and had narrowly missed a major accident, and was left shaken. He said he'd felt the masses in her and they seemed "noticably larger" in just 1 week, a trait uncharacteristic of scar tissue. He went on to say "I don't care what the biopsy said, I think that's cancer," and recommended an exploratory surgery. Oh no.
Biopsies are semi-blind stabs with sharp needles and are error prone. They're used since they are not as invasive as a full-blown surgery, but can lead to this kind of emotional roller-coaster.
So that Friday began as a setup for another long night in the ol' LGCH waiting for yet another set of "life-and-death" test results. I began composing these web pages that night in the outpatient surgery lobby. This process was just too hard day-to-day for me to sit idly by. I had to pick up something new and challening to focus on to occupy my mind while we waited for the results that we could not control.
Dr. Spirtos finally came down with the results. He'd removed a small lump from her hip area that we all took for scar tissue, since it was growing at the site where one of the drainage tubes had been placed. Once they'd removed the lump, they did a "frozen section" on it in the O.R. and had confirmed cancer. She'd had other nodules, one at her hip that was just removed, and another at the site of her original tumor in her female region, which remains inside her. The tissue that they did remove is off to Oncotech lab where they'll run assays against tissue cultures to see what chemos work (or to at least rule out those that will definitely not work). Those lab tests have to work. I'm afraid that the tumor that remains is invading more stuff inside her. Additionally, the tumor in her hip was not connected to the other tumor, which means it's spread is "systemic" and does not bode good things. Had all the tumor regrowth been in the same spot and interconnected, you could treat it as one tumor and remove it all, and feel good that you "got it all." When it's systemic there could be dozens of colonies of cancerous cells anywhere in her entire abdomen. Chemo is the only way to clean up that kind of spread, and we don't know which one will work.
So what now? Dr. Spirtos explained two main courses of action:
| Option 1 | Option 2 |
|---|---|
| 1. Makor surgery. Remove all remaining tumor(s). | 1. Try various chemo's until we find a winner. |
| 2. Take our chances regarding which chemo will work best. | 2. Do surgery after the right chemo is found. |
| 3. Follow up with 6 cycles of chemo. | |
| RISK: We won't know if the chemo we choose after the surgery is working, since no sizeable tumors remain to test progress on. | RISK: The tumor(s) invade stuff you don't want to lose while we try different chemos. |
Those are hard choices. Option 2 seemed the best course of action, and was the one that Dr. Spirtos recommended. So we're back on chemo like we planned last week, but under very different circumstances.
The tone around here went from breezy to grim very quickly. We'd just cleared the biopsy hurdle a week earlier, and we'd begun replanning our wedding.
We had just picked up our wedding rings the previous Friday.
These days are supposed to be Paige's happiest, yet the greatest tragedy imaginable has befallen her. She's worked so hard for everything in her life, and now it seems it's all being taken from her. Just when her life really seemed to be coming together (and mine), and when we were at the pinnacle of happiness, this all began.
Time to pull in that wedding date. We set the date for about 2 weeks out, on Saturday 26 June 1998. I'm at once nervous and excited about it. It seems when I think about actually getting to marry her after all these trials I still get giddy and happy. I hope the day turns out special for her.