Significant Progress

I finally have some really great news to report – Dad is no longer in the hospital! He was moved to the Promise long-term acute care facility yesterday around 3 p.m. Mountain time. He is in room 240, but for the time being Mom has asked that only his children, siblings, and aunts Jill and Nola visit him. If things continue to progress at the rate they have this week though, I'm sure he will feel up to other visitors very soon.

The week started out very poorly, as some of the doctors in the SICU were telling Mom on Monday that Dad's cancer was back in his lungs because they had seen it in his chest x-rays. They also told her that they had done everything they could clinically, but Dad hadn't made any real progress for quite awhile, and probably never would. As you can imagine, this really upset Mom and she asked to speak with Dr.'s Bull (Dad's surgeon) and Chen (Dad's oncologist) to see what they said. It turns out that somehow some of the doctors in the SICU mistakenly thought Dad has carcinoma instead of sarcoma. Dr. Bull said that if that were the case, then they would have been able to see tumors in his lungs because they grow that quickly. But, he said that sarcoma tumors don't grow that quickly and that all they are seeing in the x-rays is scar tissue and normal post-operative things. He reiterated his optimism that Dad will recover sufficiently to resume chemotherapy and return home, just that it will take some time and patience. He also said that with patients like this, they do sometimes hit plateaus, but that is to be expected and he will continue to progress, we just have to give it time.

One thing that we have definitely learned recently is how important it is for a patient to have an advocate who fights for them and is willing to question the doctors opinions when they seem wrong. If Mom hadn't stuck up for Dad and asked to speak to the other doctors, the SICU doctors would probably still be treating him like he had carcinoma tumors in his lungs and would die soon! It's hard to imagine that such huge "misunderstandings" can happen in an age with so much technology and amazing capabilities in the medical field – but they do. Please don't get me wrong, we are extremely grateful for all the work the doctors at the U of U hospital have done over the last six weeks. They saved Dad's life on more than one occasion with their expertise, but they are human too, and are therefore prone to mistakes. That's why it's so important for patients to have an advocate to look out for their best interests.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support throughout this whole ordeal. We hope that this chapter of Dad's struggle will soon be behind him so that he can move on to the next phase.