Ken Update

On Sunday afternoon, Mary Jo drove Ken down to the Mayo Clinic's ER because he's been having increasing pain in the general region of his liver and he's been having considerable difficulties eating/swallowing.  About a month ago, he started a new chemo regime - interferon and something - although the doctors had confessed that they were sailing in uncharted waters with him since he had already survived longer than the norm for his type of cancer.  And not only just survived, but really, he has done amazingly well during these past three years.  When I talked to Ken about it about a month ago, he took a sort of perverse--but well-deserved--pride in being the strongest kidney cancer patient on record at the Mayo.

About a week ago, Ken and MJ decided to stop the chemo because they felt it was accelerating the extreme fatigue and causing the swallowing problems.  When things didn't improve much after stopping the chemo, and the pain has only continued to grow (varying between a 3 and a 9 on a scale of 1-10, depending on what he is doing and how he is positioned), they decided that they would feel better seeing their doctors at the Mayo.  So, after an interesting few hours in the ER with some fascinating people-watching, Ken was seen and they decided to admit him to Mayo-Methodist for tests.

In the end, it appears that the pain in caused by the tumor on his liver.  The team of doctors/med students (Ken refers to them as the Vultures) came through and determined that he breaths deeply or is in certain positions, his diaphram pushes down against his liver and the tumor and this is causing the pain.  At one point they thought perhaps the pain was being caused by gall stones, which I thinking we were all hoping for because then they could take him in for surgery and remove the source of the pain; however, they are pretty sure that is not the case so now they are left with giving him pain medications to mask the pain.

Unfortunately, the pain medications leave him pretty sleepy but when he wakes up he is clear-headed and his usual self.

I was down there all day yesterday and Ken was in and out, but when he was "in" he was his usual, feisty, opinionated, funny self.  Who knows what happens from here? 

I think that if they could get his pain meds titrated so that he isn't so groggy that he can't get out of bed, he will be much happier.  That is what I am hoping for.  It looks like they are sending him home today.