Thanksgiving with a twist

We are most thankful to have another Thanksgiving together and to have been able to see our families during October and November. Over the past several weeks, since Cheryl finished her second course of chemotherapy, we have taken the time to travel and share time with our loved ones. We've visited Michelle, Chris, Jonas, Susannah and Abigail in Owensboro,KY, Jason, Sharon and Dylan in north Georgia, Cheryl's Mom, four sisters and two aunts in Rockingham,NC, and my Mom, four siblings and their families in Thomasville, GA.

Cheryl has been having a problem with headaches for the past couple of weeks and she has also been having intermittent nausea. The pain in her head worsened to the point that she asked me to call Dr. Negrea's office while we were visiting in Thomasville. The doctor's assistant told us to get the emergency room at Memorial Hospital in Savannah and have them do a head workup to rule out inter-cranial metastasis and give her something for her pain and nausea.

We cut our visit short and left Thomasville shortly after lunch and arrived at Savannah around 6PM. We made a couple of brief stops for Cheryl to get out and move around and we stopped by the house to swap out bags in case they decided to admit her.

She received a couple doses of high strength pain reliever and repeated doses of anti-nausea medicine before going down for a CT of her head. Shortly after 11PM, the nurse let us know that her status had been changed to pending discharge since the CT had not shown any visible tumors in her head. The doctor did say that a CT is not the ideal way to check for brain mets (cancer that has spread into the cranium) but that he was sure that Dr. Negrea would order additional tests after her appointment on Tuesday. We were sent home with prescriptions for two types of pain medicine and a relatively high dose of anti-nausea medicine.

After waiting a half an hour at the 24 hour CVS, we finally made it home just before 1 AM. During the night Cheryl took the first dose of one pain med found that it made her nauseous. We are now trying to juggle the combination so she will have a good dose of the anti-nausea meds in her system when she takes her pain pills.

Cheryl is still complaining about intense pain in the back of her head and we are hoping that the medicine that she is taking will hold it to a tolerable level until she gets in to see the oncologist.

Please be praying with us that the pain / nausea meds will work and that these symptoms that she is having are not caused by a recurrence or spread of her cancer.