Saturday, February 27, 2010

Port Update

Well, Lowell now has a new piece of hardware embedded in his upper chest and neck.

When Lowell had his pet scan on Monday he was fascinated to learn that they use fluorine 18, a man-made isotope produced from a cyclotron at the University of Utah. Fluorine 18 has a half life of 110 minutes, which means he was radioactive for a brief time.

The chemotherapy class on Tuesday was informative (the video was cheesy) and the nurse was good. She said that Lowell was the only patient she'd ever had who was able to correctly answer the question, "What is chemotherapy?" (Chemicals used to destroy rapidly-dividing cells.)

Thursday morning we were instructed to be to the hospital by 6:30 a.m. for Lowell's port placement. The receptionist told us that Lowell was the first patient that day, so when 8:30 rolled around and we were still waiting for them to come get Lowell, Elaine started pacing the floor. At 9:15 the nurse came in and added an antibiotic to the saline drip, with the comment, "We need to give you an antibiotic before we do the surgery. This will take about 45 mintues to an hour", at which time Lowell said "you mean we won't be starting for ANOTHER hour?" (He is too kind, as I would have been asking questions long before that.) She must have realized how long we had been waiting and said "I guess we can go down and get you prepped by the time the antibiotic is finished."

Everything went well and we left the hospital at 11:45. (If, as the first patient of the day, we didn't get started until 10:15 or 10:30, I'd hate to be the last patient of the day.)

Later that afternoon Lowell was blessed with a visit from Sean Martella (our nephew), who is also fighting cancer. Sean was kind enough to share his experiences and insights concerning chemotherapy. Lowell has great admiration for Sean and all he and his sweet wife, Karen, have been through. We wish them the very best and hope Sean will be accepted into a new clinical trial in New York.

We are humbled by the many expressions of love, faith and prayers that we hear of daily, many of which come from people we don't even personally know. We feel your love and can't begin to thank you enough for your prayers in our behalf. May the Lord bless you all for your kindness and thoughtfulness.

Love,

Lowell and Elaine Wright and Family

5 comments:

Suzanne said...

You are in our thoughts all the time and we pray for you all the time. We love you! - The Rentmeisters

Kathy said...

It doesn't surprise me that Lowell was the first one to know the correct answer to the question. He's a smarty pants, just like your whole family!!!
Sean said that he had a nice visit with you. Thank you for being so good to him and to us!
I pray that your body will tolerate the chemotherapy well and that it will do it's job!
I love you!

Taffy

Heather said...

I am glad every thing went well. I was thinking about Lowell a lot that day. I am sorry it took so long.

That is wonderful that Sean came in to give comfort about chemo.

As always you will be in my prayers.

Anonymous said...

We are thinking about you today...and praying for you everyday. Sure love you guys.

--Ryan and Heidi :)

Anonymous said...

I'm so sorry to hear about this. But did lowell happen to use to live in london UK ?