August 15th, 2016
It was Monday morning, time to go back to work.
Except, I still couldn’t breathe. It actually had gotten worse. Now I was having serious chest pain just from getting out of bed to go to the bathroom.
I needed to go to the hospital. These visits to the pulmonologist every few days and a couple of prescriptions weren’t cutting it. I felt that I needed to be admitted. I told my wife she would have to call in to work and tell them she was taking me to the ER.
So off we went. This time we headed to a larger hospital (Mercy Regional) further away in Lorain. This was partially because they had a larger and more fully equipped and staffed ER, and also because we expected to be admitted, and this was the hospital they would end up transferring me to anyway.
We got there and informed them of my recent cancer diagnosis. Of course, they did the EKG thing again because I had chest pain. We also did a new chest x-ray, and after an hour or two we were finally informed that I (still) had severe pneumonia and they decided to admit me.
So, no wonder I couldn’t breathe. I had lung cancer spread throughout both lungs AND severe pneumonia on top of that.
They placed an IV in my arm and they gave me a couple of IV antibiotics 2-3 times a day. I wore my nasal cannula around the clock. It was hooked up to the hospital oxygen supply on the wall. They took blood once a day, and for some reason, it had to be at like 5 AM every day. That’s not a pleasant wake up, let me tell you. Oh, but the best part about being in the hospital off your feet is the shot to prevent blood clots everyday. In the stomach.
Doctors and nurses came and went. However, I didn’t feel like I was getting better. And I had developed a strange condition. When it was time for me to pee, I got a massive pain in my chest. It didn’t make sense, the doctors didn’t understand it, but it was some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt.
I already could barely make it to the bathroom. Just that trip of ten feet and back left me gasping for air. Because of this, I sat on the edge of my bed and used a plastic urinal bottle instead. The nurses actually encouraged this anyway so they could track my urination. Despite the pain, I did make it to the bathroom for BMs. I wasn’t about to start using a bedpan!
I will say that they would provide me with whatever I needed for pain. When the chest pain got really bad, they would give me Dilaudid in my IV. Now that’s some serious pain relief. When Vicodin wasn’t cutting it for long term pain relief, they bumped me up to Oxycontin. All powerful stuff. I can see how some people can get addicted to that type of stuff.
We got some news on my cancer a few days into my stay. My oncologist Dr. Escuro stopped by and told me that I had tested positive for an EGFR mutation. Only 10-15% of adenocarcinoma cases in the U.S. have this mutation, and I am one of them.
As he had mentioned before, this meant no chemotherapy. He presented this as good news, but I wasn’t so sure. I had been preparing myself mentally for chemotherapy. I was ready to lose my hair. I was ready for the sickness, because I wanted to bombard this cancer with some serious drugs and kill it, no matter how bad it made me feel.
And now I was going to just take a pill?
He assured me that this pill was now the standard first line treatment for EGFR-positive adenocarcinoma.
So we did some internet research on it. The drug is called Tarceva. After doing a lot of reading, (I had a lot of time sitting in a hospital bed all day), I felt better seeing the results that people were getting with this drug. A couple of days later on August 22nd, my wife was able to pick up the first prescription of it and I took the first pill. This was the first day of my cancer treatment.
One nice thing is that quite a few friends and family came to visit me. My parents came of course. So did my brother and sister and their families. My family all lives a couple hours away so that’s no easy trip for them. My nephews brought me homemade cards, which was nice. I still have them.
My boss and the VP of my department at work came by as well. Maybe they thought I was faking it until then! (haha) A friend I hadn’t seen in years came by. I really appreciated seeing him. He lives on the other side of Cleveland, so it was a long drive for him, too. Another friend is a fellow Star Wars fan and brought me a big stormtrooper figure as a gift. One friend shares my interest in politics and brought me some Hillary Clinton toilet paper (sorry if you’re a Hillary fan!). My wife’s coworkers put together a huge basket full of gifts. We had visitors from our church as well. Lots of prayers were being said for me. We are very blessed to have such support.
Towards the end of my stay, I got a wakeup call of just how sick I had become. This had all gotten worse gradually over weeks. I was standing while the nurses changed my sheets or something, and I fell. I just lost my balance and fell down.
I felt myself going down, so I bent my knees, put my arms down and kind of did a sitting motion and rolled on to my back. So I didn’t get hurt at all. But the nurses freaked out. (As they should, I suppose).
“Did you just fall?!”
“Yeah. I’m OK. I’m fine.”
“No you’re not, don’t try to get up by yourself.”
Oh jeez. Now I was just embarrassed. But yeah, apparently when a patient falls, its a BIG deal in the hospital. They rushed me to Radiology for x-rays all over and everything. I felt embarrassed and stupid. How could I have fallen? But the next time I stood up, I could feel my legs buckling again and my balance going again.
Now I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed without calling for the nurse. And they activated an alarm on my bed that would go off if I got out. Wonderful.
The idea of being in the hospital was to treat the pneumonia so I could start breathing better. Long term, as the cancer was treated, my breathing would improve even further. But for now, after a week in the hospital, I wasn’t feeling any improvement at all. We were getting a bit discouraged.