What a Week!

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to give you all an update about how all of Doug's appointments went this week! Its been a very busy week and we are both very tired and are happy to have a nice Sunday at home just to relax.
Our week started out with an appointment on Monday morning with a Neurologist to talk about the issue with Doug's hands and so that he could have an EMG test done to see if they could figure out what was wrong. Basically the test did show that the nerves in both of his hands are both slow and temporarily damaged, but the neurolgist at this point has decided that it will be much better to wait a while and see if he gets better before doing anything radical like surgery. So.....unfortunatly no magic answer there! We will just continue to wait and see if his hands continue to improve, and if not we will bring Doug back to the neurologist in a couple of months. That afternoon Doug also went to get his first CT scan done and tuesday he had his first set of Tumor Markers done.
Thursday after work Doug and I headed to New Jersey to spend the night at the Coopers before driving down to Baltimore on Friday for his first followup with Dr. Sardi. It was great to see Dr. Sardi, Dr. Nick, Darlene, and Paula briefly! It was a very uneventful visit--almost one that could have been done over the phone! However, it is comforting to see the team and to have them see that Doug is doing great. Basically this was a baseline appointment and we won't have to go back until April for a 6-month checkup! At that time we will have another CT scan done and more tumor markers and they will compare them to this set that he just had done. It is the way the doctors will be able to tell what kind of effect the chemotherapy treatments are having on his body and the cells left behind.
So moving forward our next step is Tuesday we have a meeting with Dr. Upendra Hegde, a medical oncologist at the UCONN Health Center. Dr. Sardi has reached out to Dr. Hegde just to give him some background information on Doug and plan moving forward. We have the results of the Chemo Assay so I am hoping that on Tuesday Dr. Hegde will discuss what Doug's course of treatment might be. I know I am anxious to find out what the next few months hold for Doug as far as a chemotherapy schedule goes! I am also making it my goal to really step up his calorie intake to get some weight on him and try to get him to start doing some light workouts---the stronger he is the better he will feel, and we want him feeling good as new :-) So all in all, it was a busy week, and we're glad to be done with the big round of appointments, scans, and tests for now.

On a lighter note, Doug is doing great! He has been up and about (although all the hours in the car too and from Baltimore were pretty tough for him) and has been spending time with friends and continues to improve every day! As I said before, I want to get him to get more calories and really work on starting to get some weight back on. We are going to be traveling to Saratoga to spend Thanksgiving with my family in November, and I'm really looking forward to seeing them. For the next few weeks we are just going to take it easy, see our friends, and enjoy some down time together. I'm looking forward to having him feel even better so that we can do even more fun things together!

I hope everyone is ready for Halloween! We contemplated getting Kitty a costume......but then neither one of us wanted to risk being the one to try to get her into it! I hope you are all doing well, and thank you for your continued love and support, it continues to lift our spirits and reminds Doug of how popular he is :-)

Love, Lindsey