Hi,My name is Dixie and I am new. So glad to find this. I have been searching for something like this for so long. My husband (Mike) was diagnosed with cancer on the base of his tongue and the tonsil area in October of 2003. It was not operatable so he underwent 45 radiation treatments and 2 chemos. He was told upfront this was a major overdose but seemed to be his only chance at beating this. He did amazingly well and went into remission. He experienced a lot of after effects of the radiation, one of them being a small open wound on his gum line that would not heal. After much research and a lot of prayers the decision was made to go through 40 hypobaric treatments. To make a really long story short in May of 2007 another tumer was found in the same area as the first. We are still not sure if it was a reoccurrance or a second primary. This time we went to M.D.Anderson. They gave us no hope (12 months maximum with the last 6 being really bad) and only offered an experimental program that we were told would not benefit him any, but would further the research effort. Since we lived so far (We are in Mississippi) we decided to come home. He went back to his oncologist who treated him the first time and he agreed to try reradiation. He had 44 more radiation treatments this time 2 a day along with 3 more chemos. He had a peg tube put in and was told he would never eat again. He was o.k. with that and did wonderful again. On November 24th about 5p.m. we were watching t.v. and he coughed and a big chunk of blood came up. It continued, we went to E.R., they admitted him and called in ENT. He bled an unbelievable amount until 9a.m. on the 25th when they did emergency surgery. They clamped the small carodid artery on the right side and put a trach tube in. I know he was literally prayed through that surgery because the doctors gave us very little hope of him surviving and we all said our good byes. I am an only child and only have one daughter (who has 3 children ages 3-9) and my mother who was 83 had alzhemiers and lived with us for the past 5 years. I called our pastor at 4:30 in the morning to ask for prayer and by the time Mike went into surgery we had over 30 friends and church family with us. Well 4 days later we came home. My mother was placed in swing bed at our little local hospital while I was with my husband. She was in excellent physical health just mentally having trouble. She fell while there and broke her hip and had to have surgery. Another long story short she came home on a Saturday from the hospital and the following Saturday she died. This was on Dec.29th. Mike had a doctors appointment on the 2nd of January 2008 and the doctor is telling us he does not see any tumer. He is still on a tremendouse amount of pain medication and has a really lot of mucus from the trach. The doctor says the pain he is still experiancing is symptomatic of nucrosis which he has from all the radiation. He can not talk and does not want me out of his sight and I have not been since we came home the 29th of November. Aside from this he is doing really good.
I, on the other hand am hanging by a thread and it is beginning to unravel. I can't let him know because he does not need any more problems, especially a wife who is an emotional wreck. I need answers that noone seems to be able to give me. He is very optomistic and does not want to hear anything negative, therefore I can't ask the hard questions.
How long does he have? (And yes I know it is in God's hands but what are the professional opinions?)
If the cancer is gone what will happen with the nucrosis?
What effect is all this pain medicine go have on him? He takes fentynol patch 100mg every 24 hours, hydocodone,oxycodone,oxycontin,daily and ambien to sleep each night. I know this sounds unbelievable but he seems fine. He functions like he is not on anything except for the fact I don't let him drive.
Sometimes when he coughs there is a little blood in the mucus but it is not much. Where is it coming from and what does that mean?
I just need to know have we got a miricle and if we have I certainly want to give God all the glory or do I still need to be prepared to give him up. i don't think I can handle another bad surprise. I am having trouble dealing with Mom's sudden death already. Also our daughter really needs to make a job related move but is afraid to be very far from us if we are facing trouble in the near future.
Has anyone else out there been through anything similar and have any input.
I'm sorry this is so long but it has been almost 5 years of events and they all seem important for someone to understand .