Every Breath is a Second Chance

I'm trying to gather my thoughts into coherent words, sentences, paragraphs.  There is so much in my head right now that I'm not sure where or how to start. 

Friday we were scheduled for a bronchoscopy with ultrasound and biopsy to get a better picture of what was happening in Jim's lungs.   For the past few months his coughing has gotten worse, almost debilitating. Dr. Wong wanted to find out is it a lung infection (untreated since his pneumonia??) or simply a progression of the cancer.

We had an appointment two weeks ago with Dr. Chausow.  It was unsatisfying at best. "Well," he said, "that stuff you're coughing up might be an infection, or you might just have to live with it."  He did NOT inspire confidence nor did he share our fighting spirit. We fired him.

Finally this past Tuesday, we got in to see our preferred pulmonary interventionist, Dr. Ganesh Krishna. 

Research tells me that Ganesha is widely revered as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences and the deva of intellect and wisdom. He is also known as the god of beginnings. Krishna is portrayed in various perspectives: a God-child, a prankster, a model lover, a divine hero and the supreme being.  Given the etymology of our doctor's name, and what he has done for us so far, we really like Dr. Krishna.  Dr. Krishna was the one who did the earlier bronchoscopies and identified the tumors as cancerous.  Which may seem like a reason NOT to like him.  However his intelligence, professionalism, compassion, and kindness won us over almost immediately. 

He scheduled Jim for the procedure right away.  So Friday Dr. K went in and took a look around.  He found a lot of dead cells and essentially irrigated the right lung area with saline solution to clean it out then also biopsy-ing 3 sites.  The tissue was sent to cytology and to be cultured, to find out if there is cancer present and also to identify the infection.  His visual inspection led him to believe there is ...wait for it... much less cancer in the lung that they expected to find!!

Frankly, this didn't really, and hasn't really, had a chance to sink in yet.

As Jim was waking up from the procedure, it was clear that his lungs were not up to the task of taking in enough oxygen.  Every time they took him off the O2, his numbers would drop into the dangerous range.  Dr. Krishna decided to keep him in the hospital overnight to see if the lungs could recover from the procedure. As we want into the next day, it became clear that the lungs will need more time.  So in order to be discharged, we needed to get oxygen machines.

We waited about three hours for the travel unit to be delivered to the hospital and once we got home, they delivered a home unit.  A new adventure, and something new to torture the dog with.  I have to admit, I am nervous about the whole oxygen machine thing,  I was joking with Jim and Bobby about turning off his oxygen when he misbehaves, but it am a little scared that I might do something wrong.  The consequences just got more serious.  

So back to the cancer.  What does it mean, that he didn't see much cancer in the lung?  We have a follow up appointment with Doctors Krishna and Wong in the next week and we hope to have some real news to celebrate!