We had two appt. yesterday. The first was with Dr. Trang
the ear specialist. Because of the nerve damage (or Bells Palsey) he was
able to confirm the diagnosis of skull based osteomyelitis (SBO).
Essentially this is a really bad infection in the boney areas around Dad’s
ear. He made an appt. to see another infectious disease specialist, a one
Dr. Hydari (sp?), who he thought could do a better job of picking out the
antibiotics. Because of this infection we have to forego anymore chemo
treatments for at least 4 weeks. The antibiotic treatment will likely be
about 8 weeks.
Dad was very depressed with this news and it was tough to see
his reaction. He didn’t even want to go to the afternoon appt. with Dr.
Nguyen. Bill, Tom and I kept that appt and had a good chat with Dr.
Nguyen. He led us to believe that the chemo is a corrective treatment not
a palliative one. In other words, we are not pursuing the chemo just to
make Dad more comfortable. There is a good chance for long-term recovery
from this type of lymphoma.
Tom and Bill take Dad to see Dr. Nichols today. They will
look into draining fluid from not only Dad’s thoracic cavity but abdominal
cavity as well. We want to know if the fluid in Dad’s abdomen is having
an effect on his appetite and digestion.
Dr. Trang gave us a prescription for a stronger pain killer and
Dr. Nguyen gave us a liquid to stimulate Dad’s appetite.
Here are some of my thoughts (hope you don’t mind):
If you had your choices of diseases, the lymphoma might be near
the top. As cancers go, it doesn’t sound too bad. On the other
hand, bacterial infection that cause skull based osteomyelitis? Well,
that would be at the very bottom of my list. It’s hard to get and hard to
get rid of. I’m sure like many of you, when told Dad had cancer and an
ear infection, our first thought would have been that the cancer was more
troubling. This ear infection is nasty and now it has halted the
chemo. The chemo inhibits his immune system for three weeks. After
that, according Dr. Nguyen, it bounces back. The bacterial infection has
just retreated farther and deeper into his body making it much more difficult
to attack. We can’t stop the treatment for the ear. It will cause
unbearable amounts of pain as we have already seen in just a short time.
To me that path is clear. Dr. Nguyen will tell us when he’s cleared for
chemo again and asked that we give the antibiotic treatment two weeks before we
do another assessment.
Best-cased scenario: Dad responds to the new antibiotic
treatments well enough for us to get three or four rounds of chemo, the
lymphoma retreats, and then we are just fighting the war on one front – the
ear.
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