Well, we’ve been home for a couple of days now, and some things are better while others are worse. Overall, her pain is down during the day (2-3) but it’s up at night (5). She’s taking every prescribed opioid at regular min time intervals, and still her legs and back hurt. She also started her chemo and that has been going now for a couple of days. That’s the good.
The bad thing is that the day we arrived home, her stomach began to expand by significant amounts. In one day, we estimate that her waistline increased by 5-6 inches. If you just met her and didn’t know any better, you would swear she’s currently pregnant and in her third trimester. It really does look exactly like a pregnant belly. Unfortunately, we’re pretty sure it’s her liver which has expanded well outside of her rib cage area and which is pushing her organs around and compressing her stomach (tiny appetite). We know that as of the day she was discharged, her liver was already extremely diffuse. We’re not certain why that expansion continued at home, and we’re not 100% sure it’s the liver doing the continued expanding, but that just makes sense. So, we’re going to try to see her Dr here in Dayton to take a look it tomorrow. If it’s the liver, hopefully it’s stable and then we can just let the chemo do its thing and ideally put things back to normal. That’s pretty much the way it happened last May. While not as extreme, her liver had grown and had become misshapen when this happened last May. She recovered nicely last time, and I see no reason that can’t happen again. On the plus side, we’ve been measuring her waistline every morning and evening to track the growth, and today we found that it has actually decreased by 1 inch over the past 24 hours.
Also, we’ve been planning an important trip for the past month or so, and with everything happening, it may not be possible for us to travel. This trip is something that Lori has felt drawn to do, and it would be disappointing if we can’t make it happen. This isn’t a vacation, but it involves a plane ride of a long distance, and in her current condition, that could be risky. Also, being away from home for 5 days poses plenty of risk in and of itself. This trip is important enough though that we will likely travel if she can maintain her current state of health through Tuesday. This is one where we need wisdom to make the right call.
Thanks everyone for all of the support. We aren’t communicating well on phones, but we appreciate the texts and notes of encouragement.