Radiant Radiology

Well, this has been an amazing day to say the least. At Joe's primary care doctor he found out this morning that although he has been struggling with sharp spikes in blood sugar and having to take tons of insulin to bring it down his A1C number which is your blood glucose over a 3 month period is 6.5, which, while not perfect is the best Joe's has ever been since they have been charting it.

Then we went and saw the radiologist in Tyler. What a pistol! We were there for 4 1/2 hours. It seems that the VA has only initially sent over a tiny bit of paper work and they listed him as hospice palliative care only. (WOW, I am still MAD /APPALLED at that)  So she was going to refuse the referral, but when her nurse talked to Joe on the phone she told the Doctor that "He sounds rather perky for a hospice patient, I think we should see him."

So she went after the VA for Joe's records. She personally talked to everyone of his doctors. She was hopping off of the walls by the time we saw her. She said that when she asked them why nothing had been done for him they said, "Well, he can't have any kind of anesthetic," her response was, "And your point is?" She said he should have at least had a stint put in the ureter that is partially blocked by one of the tumors because one of the kidneys is enlarged. (news to us)

Anyway, she said that she wasn't waiting for them and their games, they sent him over with no current tests or anything so she did two scans, one with no dye and one with dye in the bladder only. They also got him all set up for the radiation with the markings on him. He has a holter test on Monday and Tuesday and she still needs to get some more heart info on him so they will do the first treatment next Thursday and get the rest scheduled and his exact treatment level nailed down at that time.

She also told us that bladder cancer does not normally metastasize so if it hasn't yet there is a good chance that it wont. Having radiation or chemo will make no difference to that. She said the radiation would be much better with chemo but even without it we will be able to shrink the tumors and possibly kill them. She said that they will respond very well as high grade aggressive cancer responds very quickly to radiation, it is the slow growing kind that is hard to kill. A lot of the doctors had said that don't worry about it because you can live with bladder cancer for years. She said that is true but you definitely don't want to because it is extreemely painful and all that.

I think we are still a bit blown away after so long being told there is nothing that can be done.

Praise the Lord.

Thank you all for your continuing prayers.

Love ya