Rewind

Last January we found out that the second line of treatment with a new chemotherapy drug to treat Mel's cancer had failed when they discovered that all the abdominal pain he was having was due to the fact that his tumor and infiltrated a large part of his liver but even more serious at the time, it had grown into his colon.  We had tests done and saw the surgeon. He recommended that rather than Mel having extensive abdominal surgery, we go ahead and have a stent put into the colon where the tumor was.  This was the same kind of stent used in heart attacks and what happens is the stent is deployed into the area of blockage, in this case Mel's colon, and then it expands to open up the blockage.  We had been so hopeful when he first started chemotherapy because the original chemotherapy drug he was on significantly shrank all of his tumors, then we had this huge setback, but believed this would be a good option.  Neither one of us wanted him to go through any major surgery.

This procedure was done on January 13, 2011.  When we got to Denver, Mel first had to have several liters of fluid to get his creatinine level under better control.  This is an enzyme that indicates kidney function, and since Mel had only one kidney, we had to be extra vigilant with this.  After receiving the fluids, we were sent to have the stent deployed.  Afterwards, they decided Mel should stay in the hospital overnight to receive a couple of blood transfusions.  The doctor who placed the stent was very confident that the stent had been deployed where it needed to be and appeared to be functioning appropriately. 

We went home in high spirits and great hope that this would take care of the problem.  We were, however, very concerned about the next line of treatment.  That is because there are only three drugs approved by the FDA for use in treating Stage IV kidney cancer, and we had already gone through two of them. The biggest reason for this is that kidney cancer usually never gets to Stage IV.  Most of the time it is caught much earlier in its earliest stages, but in Mel's case we had been told his tumor had been there for 12-15 years.  There were drug trials that they were doing on patients, but when you are given the diagnosis of Stage IV, the FDA will not allow you to be on a clinical trial. 

Our oncologist never gave up hope and always talked about patients he had been treating with Stage IV kidney cancer that were four or five years out from the original diagnosis.  He never gave us numbers in terms of survival rate, and we never asked.  We had great faith that God would heal Mel, and we also thought if these other patients were alive five years out that we had at least five years to look forward to.  At the beginning of this journey, we both agreed that because we had the kids, and they were so young, that we would be as aggressive as possible with the cancer to buy Mel time with the kids and me.  We would soon find out how naive we had been, but never did we give up on the power of prayer and prayed for a complete and total healing.