"When the walls came tumbling down....."

I have the need to borrow this particular line from Def Leppard's song because it really has been feeling as though the "walls" are coming down around us.....

Jess hasn't been feeling all that great since before Easter Sunday, when we had our "first" ER visit to Northside Hospital. She had all the same symptoms that she had when she had pneumonia. But they said she had a virus, treated her for that and sent us home. Then in mid-May, another Sunday visit to the ER since she had great difficulty breathing and a lot of chest pressure. This time she was diagnosed with bronchitis and given antibiotics. One round of them did not take care of her issues so a second was ordered. Still, only minimal relief. About a week later we called Dr. Knight. Jess was still not feeling better. He ordered a chest x-ray which now revealed fluid in both lungs whereas the second ER visit only showed fluid in one. A different kind of antibiotic was ordered since the previous one was obviously not working. It gave her a bit of relief but she still didn't feel "good".

As Father's Day approached, Jess was once again feeling worse. The family came over on Saturday to celebrate but she mostly observed. Sleep was getting difficult again and the pressure in her chest was coming back. And then, when Jessica woke up on Sunday morning, her left arm was swollen from the shoulder down to her fingers and the color of her arm was a reddish/purplish shade...definitely not normal. I spoke to the on-call doctor from The Hope Center who told us to go to ER....it could be a vascular problems, so Northside Hospital was once again graced with Jess' presence.

After blood work, CT scans, x-rays and an ultrasound, we were given more news to deal with than we ever could have expected, and Jess was admitted into the Medical ICU. The swelling is a vascular problem. She has two blood clots. One in the left jugular and another in a left side vein which is blocking blood flow in her arm. She was put on heparin, a blood thinner, and also on oxygen to help with her breathing which was quite shallow. She also had large amounts of fluid in both lungs which have since been drained. 850 cc's came out of the left lung on Monday, and on Tuesday 875 cc's were drained from the right. Needless to say, she was able to breathe so much better even after the first lung was taken care of.

But the most devastating news we received on Sunday was about the original tumor that lies within Jess' chest, apparently with an indestructible shield surrounding it. The treatment over the last year+, as evidenced by her CT scan in March, had shrunk the tumor down to a very manageable size from it's original 13 cm of August, 2005. But now, in the course of less than three months, it has managed to regain it's strength and grow larger than ever and reverse its course. It was no longer laying vertical, but now in a horizontal fashion right on her lungs and also right over the other main vein that leads into the main artery the heart....the danger here being that the tumor could compress that vein and stop blood flow to her heart. The tumor is also responsible for the fluid in her lungs since it is blocking the area between her lungs and chest wall and therefore, trapping it within.

And now, we sit in that pile of rubble from the wall that was protecting us all from this cancer.

Jess is still here at Northside, but out of ICU since Tuesday, and we're hoping she'll be home this weekend. Her blood clots are being monitored and and the heparin should be keeping any new ones from forming. The lungs are currently clear and a plan is in place for the cancer. Jessica started a new chemo this past Tuesday here in the hospital. She will be getting treatment every week (at the Hope Center) until this nuisance is under control. By then, I expect that her team will have a plan in place to destroy it, hopefully once and for all.


You see, we have God, and the doctors who do His work on our side, and they are all working very hard to get Jess well so she can recover from yet another fork in the road. This Chapter has become a bit longer with the uneven pavement making the Journey for Jessica that much more difficult to walk upon, but there will be better days ahead. We just need to have faith and keep believing......