Day 5 - Friday

Came in at the usual time, around 8:45; Gary was hungry -- they sent him a liquid diet for breakfast. Sharin was his nurse today. Dr. Vasquez from cardio came in around 8:50. She wanted the stress test done. Dr. Nicole Wheeler showed up a bit later and said his AFP was incredibly high. That's the level in the blood that is an indicator for cancer. They can't believe it's just from the liver, so they plan to do bone scan this afternoon (to see if there's bone cancer), and possibly do the stress test. At 9:10, someone showed up and did an EKG (finally). So I went downstairs to get a cookie and coffee, and made some phone calls.

By the time I was back upstairs, about 10:15, Gary said Nicole had returned and told him something. He couldn't remember -- but she had left a note in his drawer. I opened his drawer and found a paper towel. It said "Note: Like I said this a.m. don't believe it until it happens :) Angiography had a cancellation and says they will do the angio today. So the other scans (heart and bone) will be done later. Wanted to keep you updated. Thx. Nicole 10:00."

At 12:15, they came and took his vitals. Blood pressure was 102/53.

I stayed with Gary until his "lunch" came -- another clear liquid set of goodies. I helped him set up the boullion and tea. Then I went downstairs and had Burger King from the Canteen. Yum.

At 2PM, they came to get him for the angio. It was supposed to take at least an hour or two even. I followed him to radiology and waited. At some point, Anne paged me (I had left a message that I wanted to talk when she had time) and I went up to the 8th floor to meet with her. I was worried about the THC stuff. She said they were more worried about the cancer. His AFP numbers had skyrocketed. Of course, if everything was OK, they still wouldn't put him on the list for 60 days because of the THC, and then he'd have to take all the testing again. In Oregon. Great. We all knew he couldn't last that long.

Guess it was about 3:00 when they brought him back to his room. Pamela would be his nurse tonight. She was really efficient and worried about him moving around too much. Because of the angio, he could get a stroke or seizure by "throwing a clot." He was cranky about getting settled. Finally he did, though.

At 4:30, the Liver Team showed up. They drew all the curtains around us and explained that Gary was not a candidate for a transplant because the liver cancer had completely engulfed one lobe of the liver. They were there for a very short time. Gary asked them how long he had. They refused to answer.

I stopped Dr. Hamm in the hallway and asked him what the plan was. I was concerned that we were scheduled to be on a plane tomorrow, but I didn't think Gary had the strength to do it. He seemed sort of flippant about it -- we could leave tomorrow if we wanted. But I knew Gary couldn't handle it. Finally, we decided it would be best if he stayed over the weekend, ate normal meals, got a bit of exercise and got on the plane on Monday.

I stayed and at 7PM they sent him some real food. Baked salmon and other goodies. He enjoyed it. He even gave me a bite. He wasn't that upset. He said we'd go home and he'd eat good food and excersise. Fruit and vegetables. Nothing too much to worry about. He'd see how long he could last. Anyway, maybe they could do some kind of dialisis that would clean his blood the way the liver does. Ann stopped back by to check on us, and he asked her about that. She said the technology just wasn't there yet.

I left around 10PM. He walked me to the door of his room. I cried and so did he. I told him we just had to stay positive and get home.



I went back to the Liver Lodge, by way of the Taco Bell. I was so upset. I called all around. Talked to everyone. Didn't know what to do. Started planning for departure. Step one was to get out of the Lodge -- I almost left that night, but Joe talked me into staying. I started packing up stuff, because I knew I'd leave that morning for good. At 3AM, I finally hit the sack.