Doctor Appointment

This morning Matt and Casey and I (Kitty) went to UW-Madison Hospital where Matt has been doing his clinical trial.  Matt had labs done first and then doctor appointment.

As soon as Clinical RN Rosemary saw Matt she new something was wrong.  Since Matt stop taking the two chemo pills has felt worse.  The whites in Matt's eye have gotten yellow and even his skin on his face has gotten yellow.  Matt has been very tired and has been sick to his stomach since last Tuesday.  Casey had taken Matt to their friend who is a PA and said something is going on with Matt's liver.  She thought it would be okay for him to wait another day to see his doctor on Monday.

The labs show that a normal Biliruben test  was high. A normal number is 1.4 and Matt's biliruben was 9.3.  It also showed his ALT and other tests were all high.  They wanted to put Matt in the hospital.
Of coarse Matt has been trying to avoid any hospital but Casey put her foot down and told him he had to
stay and get better! 

Matt's weight has gone steadily down.  He has no desire to eat.  He still tries to push himself to eat something.  His weight has gone done to 121.9. 

His CEA tumor marker test had gone down the last time to 41.0 Today his CEA tumor marker test was 53.1.  This number can flucate due to the liver problem he is having.  Hopefully when we get his liver back in check his tumor marker number will go down again.

Matt was put into the hospital and at 4:15 today he had a ERCP test done,  This is a procedure where they had to put Matt out and put a scope down his throat into his liver to see what could be blocking things.  The bile duct to his liver is being pressed on and making it very small for fluids to flow through.  The doctor put in a temporary stint to hold it open.  Hopefully in a day or two Matt's liver will function normal and his yellow will go away.  Tomorrow Matt will have a CT-Scan and hopefully it will show what is going  on with Matt's liver.   What they suspect is the small nodule of Cancer that is on his liver might have grown and be the culprit pressing on his bile duct and causing all the problems.  If this is the case then in two weeks Matt will come back to UW-Hospital and they will put in a permanent stint.

Matt has gotten some sleep earlier today and I hope he  gets a good night sleep tonight.  He is up two to three times a night to go to the bathroom or he just can't sleep.  Sleep will help Matt a lot if he can get some.

Thank you to everyone for your continued prayers. Please say a prayer that the nodule is the problem and nothing else.  I pray that when this gets cleared up Matt will be able to start phase 2 of the clinical trial.  He was supposed to start that today but due to the liver problem that is put on hold. They said it usually take at least two phases to see that it is shrinking the cancerous tumors.