Update on Vicki

On Tuesday, May 9th, Vicki met with Dr. Marshall at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center. I’ll fill you in on the results of the visit. But first, I wanted to provide a little background.

Vicki has endured a very difficult spring. We have hospitalized her three times (for about a week each) since March because she has been developing more complications, in some cases related to cancer. In early March Vicki suffered from a blood clot in her left shoulder. This caused significant swelling in her arm and presented a potentially life threatening risk if the blood clot were to break up and block a blood vessel in her lungs. So we admitted her to the hospital and the doctors were able to treat her effectively. This is not uncommon for cancer patients to have problems with blood clots.

In late March Vicki experienced another of her periodic flare-ups of ulcerative colitis. This episode turned out to be particularly stubborn and we admitted her to the hospital again to enable her doctors to bring the ulcerative colitis under control. Then, in April, Vicki developed pneumonia and we admitted her to the hospital a third time for treatment.

Since March Vicki’s abdomen had begun to grow larger. She also began to develop significant pain in her side. After examination by Dr. Marshall last week, he determined that she had a fluid build-up in her abdomen and that they would need to drain it. So last week Georgetown Radiology conducted a paracentesis to drain the fluid from her abdomen. Vicki also had a CT scan at Georgetown last week. She tolerated the treatment well and seemed to be feeling much better over the weekend.

Today, Dr. Marshall provided us with the results of the tests on the fluid and the CT scan. He noted that the fluid contained no cancerous cells – very good news. He also explained that neither the tumor in the liver, the enlarged lymph nodes near the liver, nor the small cancerous lesions on her right lung had grown any measurable amount since February – once again very good news.

So the question remains: what’s causing the fluid build-up in the abdomen and how serious is this? He believes the fluid build-up indicates the liver is functioning less efficiently due to the combination of the cancer – which is apparently blocking a least two major veins (portal and middle hepatic) – and the various treatments she has received over the past couple of years.

We have scheduled another paracentesis at Georgetown for Thursday and we will meet with Dr. Marshall again in a few weeks. Hopefully Vicki will feel well enough following the paracentesis to enjoy the rest of the spring weather here in Washington.