The Struggle Has Ended

Greg Hewlett passed away on January 17th after nearly eight years of battling colon cancer. While we grieve his loss, we are comforted to know that he is with his Lord.

If you would like to leave your thoughts on Greg, please see this thread.

If you would like to make a charitable donation in Greg's honor, please see this thread.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

No more treatment planned

A quick uneventful trip to Houston resulted in some good news. Dr. Eng decided that there is no good reason for chemo right now. That's right, no chemo. No radiation. Nothin but healing. Til July 23, when I go back for a scan.

Her reasoning - we have not seen anything suspicious on the scans in over a year except the lung mets that Dr. Hofstetter took out. And I've had a significant amount of chemo during that time. So she's putting me on the wait-and-watch protocol (that's the medical term for it, I think).

I'm trying to comprehend this. This is new territory for me.


Wednesday, April 18, 2007

What's next

As the pain fades from my previous lung surgery, my mind turns to the next item on the agenda. The odd thing is that there is none. No more "trouble spots" need to be dealt with. I feel like I'm a space walker floating out where I should not be. I am thankful. And I do trust that God has somehow brought me here in his wisdom, but part of me does not feel completely safe. I wish I were back on earth.

Tomorrow afternoon I meet with my surgeon and my general oncologist. What will they tell me? Will they suggest more chemo? After all, they still believe the chances are high that there are still small mets out there that haven't yet surfaced. But even if there are, chemo may not be the best choice right now. At the same time, they have expressed some hope that this could actually be it; that they've pruned the last bugger. That is my prayer.

We'll see what they say.

Friday, April 6, 2007

Some hospital pics

Some more pictures from the surgery...

Here is the bong I got to smoke daily after surgery:
bong.JPG


Release! John and I out front of the hospital getting that first breath of wonderfully humid Houston air, four days after the lung surgery:
discharge.JPG


Nils, John and I at Goode Co Texas Seafood shortly afterwards. This is one of my favorite spots in Houston. We were in great spirits as the surgery had gone so well, and I was in relatively low pain :
Goode.JPG


Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Doctors, nerds, and pneumonia

Things have been going great. I am still in disbelief about how small the pain is this time compared with last. I still have discomfort and some difficulty sleeping, but this is nothing compared with last time.

One issue, however, was that my chest tube incision was still oozing this weekend. I went to the ER at Richardson hospital Saturday night because it had become greenish and this could be due to a problem with the air pocket. As I walked in the door, I was confronted by a packed room full of crying and coughing. This was not the place I needed to be. I immediately left and called the surgeon on call at MD Anderson. He agreed that I should not be in an environment like that for six hours, but that I did need to get this checked out. He recommended I go to the local urgent-care-ER facility first thing Sunday to get evaluated and get an x-ray, which I did. I was bummed to miss worship with my friends, but hey, there's always Easter(!). The doctor examined the xray and saw that my lower right lung seemed to be developing early stage pnemonia - not good. The on-call surgeon said I'd probably have to go to Houston to see my surgeon. And they put me on antibiotics.

To speed things up and get better info to my surgeon in Houston before driving down, I wanted to send the x-ray images electronically to MD Anderson. The urgent care places said they did not have the capability to send images electronically, but gave me a CD that the xray machine spits out. The CD was an autorun diagnostic image software with unrecognizable image format files. And it was huge - 30Mbyte. The doctors and nurses at MD Anderson aren't computer geeks, nor are they patient with computers, even if I could send them a bunch of raw files. So I called up my high tech Houston buddy Nils and we came up with a plan. I copied the CD directory structure onto a temporary ftp server Nils set up on his home PC. Nils then burned an exact duplicate CD, which he delivered to my surgeon the next morning. No FedEx needed. Pretty cool, huh?

Long story a little longer, Dr. Hofstetter evaluated the x-rays and determined that this should be fine on its own and that there is no need to go to Houston. So I'm happy at home and back on track recovering.


Minor complication

Things have been going great. I am still in disbelief about how small the pain is this time compared with last. I still have discomfort and some difficulty sleeping, but this is nothing compared with last time.

One issue, however, was that my chest tube incision was still oozing this weekend. I went to the ER at Richardson hospital Saturday night. As I walked in the door, I was confronted by a packed room full of crying and caughing. This was not the place I needed to be. I called the surgeon on call at MD Anderson and he recommended I go to the local urgent-care-ER facility first thing Sunday to get evaluated and get an x-ray, which I did. That doctor saw that my lower right lung seemed to be developing early stage pnemonia - not good. The on-call surgeon said I'd probably have to go to Houston to see my surgeon. And they put me on antibiotics.

To speed things up and get better info to my surgeon in Houston before driving down, I wanted to send the x-ray images electronically to MD Anderson. The urgent care places said they did not have the capability to send images electronically, but gave me a CD that the xray machine spits out. The CD was an autorun diagnostic image software with unrecognizable image format files. And it was huge - 30Mbyte. The doctors and nurses at MD Anderson aren't computer geeks, nor are they patient with computers, even if I could send them a bunch of raw files. So I called up my high tech Houston buddy Nils and we came up with a plan. I copied the CD directory structure onto an ftp server Nils set up at his home PC. Nils then burned an exact duplicate CD, which he delivered to my surgeon the next morning. No FedEx needed. Pretty cool, huh?

Long story a little longer, Dr. Hofstetter evaluated the x-rays and determined that this should be fine on its own and that there is no need to go to Houston. So I'm happy at home and back on track recovering.