August 28, 2012: Follow up Dr. Visit and more testing

Today was our first follow up visit with Dr. Kafaja, since Britt started chemo. She is also having a bacteria breath test today (she had to fast since 11pm last night).  Dr. Kafaja went through the normal questions and diagnostics (checking ears, nose mouth and throat, blood pressure, reflexes, listening to her heart, lungs and skin score testing).  When checking the tightness of her skin she had a look on her face that caught our eye.  She kept going back over certain sections of her body.  I asked her if she could feel a difference in her skin (because we had). She said she felt a significant difference in her skin and wanted to have Dr. Furst also compare the skin score test to the one done prior to starting chemo.  This brought tears of joy to my eyes because I thought I had felt a difference in her skin but you sometimes have to wonder, if you want something so bad that you convince yourself of seeing a change. Dr. Kafaja’s reassurance that her skin score had decreased form what appeared to be 31 to 18 was astonishing! Something is workingJ  We just hope her internal organs are responding to treatments as successfully as her skin.

Test results from Gastric emptying test showed a slight delay that will continue to be watched. Hot flashes are coming more frequently and just have to be dealt with at this time.  One interesting observation, since she has started having Lupron injections her Reynaud’s disease hasn’t been flaring up as often.  Britt has been experiencing increased dry eyes and dry mouth.  Dr. Kafaja is starting her on a new medication (Evoxac) to increase moisture production in the body (specifically saliva and tears).

When listening to her lungs Dr. Kafaja could hear  decreased breath sounds in her right lung.  She wasn’t sure if there could possibly be an infection or a change to one of the lungs.  She ordered a chest x-ray and advised that if it came back negative she would be upping the dose of her next chemo treatment as her white count was still high (9.2).

Her urine test show crystals in the urine which could be deposits from kidney stones.  Britt is being ordered to drink MORE water.  Which is always a good thing but she already feels like her eyeballs are floating.

Dr. Kafaja ordered Pulmonary Function Tests to be repeated in late September.  This will give us an indication of how her lungs are performing. The hope is that we will see an increase in performance, up from 50% (an indication that the chemo is working).  A CT scan of the lungs will be repeated in December.  This will allow us to see how the fibrosis in the lungs is changing (fingers crossed for the good).

The Doc. has decided to keep Britt on the decreased level (5mg.) of Prednisone for the time being and not take her off of it completely.  With each decrease in dosage, Britt experiences pain and stiffness for several days.  We will try this until her next follow up visit.

After leaving Dr. Kafaja’s office we headed over to the Medical Center for the bacteria breath test and chest x-ray.  Britt had to drink about a ½ cup of a sugar water solution and blow into a tube every 15 minutes.  This test was performed to ensure that her digestive system is not slowing down.  If bad bacteria are present, it would indicate that she has a back up in her small intestines.

In between this testing we ran downstairs to have the chest x-ray done and back up to complete the bacteria breath test.  We are getting very good at multitasking in the medical center.

Lunch at In-N-Out was much enjoyed.  No Ditty Reise run today as we were trying to get a head start on the traffic.

As long as there is no infection in Britt’s chest, her next round of chemo is scheduled for September 7^th. Thank you to all of our friends, family and medical team for all of your continued support, thoughts and prayers.  We really appreciate it.