Tuesday, March 17, 2009

St. Patrick's Day Doctor Report

Dr. Sosman was very pleased with how well Woody is doing. He mentioned how much better Woody is a week after this last treatment in comparison with how he was the week after his first treatment. Definitely he is doing much better this time! Dr. Sosman was very pleased that he had gotten in 19 treatments. He said that 19 was close enough to 20 and agreed that Woody had made a good decision to stop when he did and not take a chance on compromising his kidneys this time. Woody's creatinine level had gone down to "almost" normal--the number is sitting just above the normal line in today's lab report.

Dr. Sosman ticked off three things that we still have to deal with: 1) upper left arm/radiation; 2) broken bones in lower left arm at wrist/surgery; 3) the melanoma.

#1: we will be having a consultation with someone in radiation at Vanderbilt next week. The radiation treatments once decided upon will be done here in Tullahoma. We will be seeing Dr. Holt, Woody's orthopedic surgeon at Vandy, next week also for his 8 week check after surgery that removed the melanoma tumor from his upper left arm.

#2: we will discuss his lower arm surgery with Dr. Holt. She is supposed to recommend a trauma orthopedic surgeon for Woody to see at Vandy.

#3: In 5 weeks Woody will have a cat scan done to see how his melanoma "hot spots" have responded to the IL-2 treatments. He will see Dr. Sosman in 6 weeks to find out the results of the scans. (and...shhhhhhhhh...we won't go here yet...but...if results are seen, then he could be having another set of IL-2 treatments a week or two after seeing Dr. Sosman.) Woody doesn't want to hear this and can't imagine doing treatments again--at this point!

Today's Vanderbilt visit was much shorter than previous ones...but still wearing on Woody especially. He was ready for his recliner and a good nap when we got home.

He is still miserable due to itching!

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