Rough Days for the Maxwell Family

My dad, Leo Maxwell, passed away of heart failure midday Wednesday, November 10th in Thomasville, GA at age 89. He is very dear to both Cheryl and I so we both wanted to go over and be with my mom during this time of loss. Cheryl called her doctor's office and got clearance to travel since she had already done her blood work in preparation for this coming week's chemo.

The Wednesday afternoon/early evening car trip tired Cheryl out so she stayed home when my siblings and I went to the funeral home on Thursday morning with my mother to finalize arrangements. When we came home around lunch time, Cheryl was still somewhat tired and her left upper chest and back were aching. She used her heating pad and got some relief but as the evening progressed the pain grew worse and by bedtime she was having difficulty breathing.

After a quick call to my health insurance to get the go ahead to go to the emergency room and to verify that they were an in-network provider,we headed into town. When Cheryl told them that she was a cancer patient (the head scarf may have given them a clue), and that she was having difficulty breathing, they almost immediately got her into a treatment room. They quickly hooked her up to an IV and gave her a good dose of pain medicine to help her relax even though she was still experiencing difficulty breathing.

The nurses immediately began doing what they could to ease her discomfort and the doctor and head nurse on duty tried to help us drain Cheryl's left PleurX drain. We had left home without any of her bottles since it had only been a few days since we had last drained her and she was not experiencing any symptoms that would have made this a priority when we left. They even got me gloved up and assisted me in trying a couple of different connectors to the wall vacuum, neither of which worked.

The doctor then ordered a chest x-ray, which she then had me come in and give her a comparison to some of the previous x-rays Cheryl has had. She determined that Cheryl's left lung cavity has about 200-300 cc of free fluid and that there is about 100 cc of loculated (encapsulated) fluid around the right lung. Since the vacuum did not work to pull off the fluid and the quantity should not have been enough to trigger shortness of breath, the doctor suspected that Cheryl might have another pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lung) so she sent Cheryl in for a CT scan.

After another half hour wait, the CT results came and showed that Cheryl was not suffering from a PE. The doctor recommended that we drain Cheryl's PleurX as soon as possible and that she continue on her prescription pain meds that she has. After spending a little over eight hours in the ER Cheryl was discharged around 8:15 Friday morning. She had gotten several hours of sleep due to the pain meds they had given her and I'd managed to get about fifteen minutes of sitting up in a chair sleep.

Since the visitation for Daddy was set for 6-8 PM Friday and the funeral was at 11 AM Saturday morning, immediate draining was out of the question. Cheryl took a Darvocet and rested during the day Friday. About half way through the visitation, Cheryl was exhausted so my sister-in-law Linda took her back to Mama's house. Cheryl made it through the funeral okay and also did well on the trip home Saturday afternoon.

We hooked up her PleurX drain this afternoon and pulled off about 60 cc of fluid. I'm not sure why we couldn't pull off everything that showed on the x-ray. Perhaps her doctor can shed some light on that for us. She has taken her steroid this evening in preparation for tomorrow's round of Taxol.

Please be praying that all the blood work she had done last week will show that her levels are okay for her to go through this round of chemotherapy. Also, continue to pray that the CA125 cancer marker will keep dropping.