My Mitt

Thank you all for your support.  We both are very grateful as your love, thoughts and prayers keep us uplifted and reminds us that we are not alone.  This blog is named PapaMitt because Mike has two alias; Papa to his grand kids & kids and Mitt to me and friends.

We've known for quite sometime that Mitt was sick, the hard part was convincing his doctor. Over the past two years Mike has had many doctor appts.  The symptom that bothered him the most was his loss of muscle with other symptoms; weight loss, pain, heartburn, a cough. On Feb 28 after being told no to getting a body scan at Kaiser, Mike went to LA out of network and had a body scan.  We knew it would find something we just didn't know what.  He was experiencing severe heartburn at the time so after researching online I thought it was pancreatic cancer. We were called on March 2 and told that a spot was found on his liver and I remember thinking "oh it's his liver that one little spot is sure causing a lot of problems". But the nurse that called us had a bit of a shaky voice so I was a little apprehensive. Then they faxed us the report and our hearts sank...4 liver lesions, we converted them to inches to fully understand... one 5 inch, one 3 inch and two 1 inch ones, we both felt like throwing up. We quickly looked up how big the liver is; it's a 6" x 8" organ in a football shape. We cut out pieces of paper and laid them out to get an idea of how much of his liver was involved. We were devastated it answered all our questions as to what was causing all his symptoms and the lesions along with symptoms told us it was cancer.

Kaiser then agreed to do a scan after seeing the results from LA. He had a scan at Kaiser March 9 which showed the same results and it was frustrating as we had to stay on them just to schedule the biopsy. The biopsy was done March 21 and on March 22 Mike was in such severe pain I rushed him to the ER and he was admitted to the hospital for internal bleeding. It was actually the ER doc who came in and told us it was cancer and of course by this point we already knew but it was still so hard to hear it. He stayed in the hospital Thursday through Saturday and while there his pain went from the pain from the internal bleeding which was in the middle of his abdomen to pain on his lower left side. The surgeon told us it was his colon.  They believe his liver cancer is secondary and that they will find the primary cancer in his colon. We've had to wait for him to recover from biopsy to have the colonoscopy and a endoscopy of his esophagus and stomach it is scheduled Thurs. March 29. So next week sometime we should have all the results in and have a detailed diagnosis. As for his current condition he has had a rough morning, dry heaves and pain.  Tomorrow he has a preop appt for Thursday's appt. 

I will try to post all updates here as we have anything new to post.

Love to you. Chris