Adrienne is having some new pain in her back so she's going to have scans next week. We aren't sure what we'll do if the pain is caused by disease but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. She's taking pain meds, although the pain isn't as severe as it was last December and hopefully it won't escalate that much. We can't feel anything in the area that's hurting and she doesn't feel the fullness from tumor that she felt before so we're hopeful that this is something small and isolated.
Adrienne mentioned to me that she heard from the pulmonologist at City of Hope recently. It turns out that her bronchial lavage was positive for adenovirus. For most people, adenovirus is a self-limiting infection but it can be quite serious in immunocompromised people. She doesn't have any pneumonia symptoms so no treatment is needed now but the infectious disease doctor and the pulmonologist said that this wouldn't account for the changes on Adrienne's PET scan last April. Oh well.
Once again, we wait.
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Adrienne was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease in 1996 at age 9. She had multiple relapses, two bone marrow transplants, and a range of chemos and radiation therapies, and passed away on October 1, 2009. We are heartbroken.
Out with the Girls
About Adrienne
- Adrienne
- Adrienne was very much like others with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, the most common cancer in teens and young adults. What was unusual is that she had it for more than half her life and ultimately, it took her life. Hodgkin's is curable for about 80% people, but Adrienne was one of the 20% for whom a cure was elusive. She considered herself lucky since treatments had been there for her with each relapse but she ran out of treatment options and her body just couldn’t take any more. As she said, "Though I’ve now had cancer for most of my life, I no longer plan my life around it; instead, I try to plan cancer around my life." We hope you can take inspiration from her and how she lived her life.
4 comments:
Ugh - waiting sucks.
Hoping for resolution to Adrienne's back pain - think of you guys every day...........Vx
I hate waiting! Hope the back pain doesn't escalate. Darn..there's always something : ( ((HUGS))
I hope the back pain has resolved--enough is enough already.
Hope the rest and relaxation part of the summer is still working out . . .
Karen, Clare's mom
Hi there Alison,
Hoping that the back pain is subsided or subsiding... and that it's something manageable.
Yes, it's always something.
Thinking of you,
K
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