The surgery was Friday the 13th. Before surgery, J and his little brother had met on the bottom floor of the hospital since there are visitation restrictions on young children due to RSV. They both repeatedly ran under this tall ladder. Over and over. OK, I'm not superstitious, but I thought it was a bit funny.
The frozen section looked most like lymphoma. That was good news to us. But there are many additional tests that are performed, most of which I just kind of nod yes about when the doctor is explaining them to us. The final diagnosis is Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma. You may be familiar with Hodgkins and non-Hodgkins lymphoma, this is one of the numerous types of non-hodgkins lymphoma. Over the next several days various tests slowly came in. The disease is only in the abdomen and pelvis. They did not find any in the bone marrow. They also did not find any in the fluid surrounding the brain (CSF fluid). They staged him as Stage III. Stage IV is the highest stage.
Don't remember much about Saturday, Valentine's Day, except Mom and I weren't together for most of it. We had a moment to sneak out to lunch at a Tandoori BBQ. Poor J, lots of pain with his pelvic incision and the incision where the MediPort was placed up in his chest. Didn't like to move very much. Didn't like to take his pain medications, tastes gross.
Sunday after church, we went back to the hospital and they decided we would be discharged. We were so excited to all be able to go home. We put him upstairs in our bedroom on our reclining love seat. He was pretty tender and needed a lot of assistance moving. Once he was positioned I went downstairs. We have had a baby monitor set up in our bedroom and our kitchen. At some point later, I heard him yell "Dad" through the monitor. I went up and he was lying to the side, unable to lift himself up. I asked if he had been like that a long time and he said yes. So, a little more vigilance on the parent's part:). J is survived being home in spite us.
Monday we had a PET/CT scan. This is the absolute coolest test in all of medicine (not biased at all). It is commonly used to stage a cancer after the diagnosis has been established. It looks at glucose metabolism as a marker of where the cancer is. This confirmed that the disease was only in the abdomen and pelvis, once again, nice news.
With this we were finally ready to head back to the hospital and start treatment.
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