Cancer

We’re Pregnant! BOOOOYAH!

08/30/2012 By Luke 10 Comments

That’s Right Baby!

McFadden #3 is in production, with delivery scheduled for January 29th. And we are SUPER PUMPED! We found out a long time ago, but didn’t want to spoil the news in the midst of all my cancer trash. But now that it’s over, bring on the baby! Lindsay is currently 18 weeks pregnant, and we find out the sex of the baby in two weeks! We were hoping for twins, but there’s just one adorable creature growing in Lindsay right now.

Baby #3 @ 12 weeks!

Before You Ask, It’s not a Chemo Baby

It was on a Wednesday that we found out that I would be starting chemotherapy on Monday. Our Dr. talked to us about the high possibility of infertility after chemo therapy, not to mention the incredibly high chance if I would need surgery. So he talked to us about “banking”, which we just weren’t interested in. He said we’d need to wait at least a year after finishing with chemo before trying again also. This was pretty disappointing news as we’d been planning to start trying for #3 very soon. We asked if it would be ok to try before starting chemo, and our Dr. laughed at us! He didn’t think it possible with such a small window of opportunity. Well who’s laughing now! MUAHAHAHAhaha…ha…ha!

Celebrating the news! Big brother and big sister!

New Life Means New Things

As with any baby sized addition, changes are on the pipeline. We’re going to need to do some new things in the house, swap out one of our cars for a new minivan, and learn some new defensive moves: a zone defense, instead of man-to-man. We also get to spend time thinking of new names! When we learned we were pregnant with Titus, we picked both a boy and a girl name. We got lucky with our second child being a girl, as we just used the “left over” girl name we picked before. NOW WE ARE NAMELESS. And we really haven’t had much time to think about it yet! We are definitely going to find out of it’s a boy or a girl. Oh, and we like names that mean things, even if it’s just to us.

Titus (Giant or of the giants) Theodore (theo = God, dore = gift) = Giant Gift of God.

Lillian (beautiful) Keona (Gift of God, Americanized Polynesian/Hawaiian I believe) = Beautiful Gift of God.

Filed Under: Cancer, My Life Tagged With: baby, pregnant, third

Oh hey, I’m cancer free!

08/29/2012 By Luke 8 Comments

We Kicked Cancer in the Face

Death to Cancer

After 9 weeks of chemotherapy and a 7 hour surgery with a week in the hospital, I’m officially cancer free! Eat that cancer! My pathology results came in, and they found no active cancer cells in the 40+ lymph nodes they removed. Chemotherapy successful nuked all traces of cancer in my body, and the surgery cleaned up house. All the enlarged lymph nodes contained scar tissue and other evidence that the teratoma cells were dead.

Four Weeks After Surgery

Tomorrow marks 4 weeks since my surgery. Things are SO MUCH better. I’m off my awful 20g-of-fat-per-day diet, and I can eat anything I want! I still spend a fair amount of the day in bed resting, which isn’t what I had originally anticipated. But I underestimated the effects of such an invasive surgery. I started heading back into the office this week, but so far have only managed an hour or two before I’m exhausted.

My stomach and incision are doing great. Though the better I feel, the more I use my abdominal muscles, which brings more pain and tenderness. Baby steps though, are better than no steps at all. I’ve got another 8 weeks till I’m back to 90%.

So What’s Next

If you remember, all of my cancer treatment has happened locally, except my surgery in Seattle. I’ve officially “transfered” back to local care for my follow-up and surveillance appointments. Right now I’m scheduled to go in every 3 months for the first year, then every 4 months for a year, then every 6 months after that. The chances of cancer returning are in the 2-3% range over the next 5 years. I like those numbers, and if my cancer does return, we’ll just have to kick it in the face again.

Now that we have the pathology results, we know the exact details of the cancer that was in my lymph nodes. Which means we’re able to dial in what my surveillance looks like, specifically no more CT scans! We’ll be primarily watching blood tumor markers.

P.S. GOD IS GOOD.

Filed Under: Cancer Tagged With: cancer, it is finished

One Week After Surgery

08/14/2012 By Luke 6 Comments

One Week Later… I’m Home!

Well, at the time of writing it’s been a little over a week, but I was released from the hospital 7 days after my 7 hour surgery. My Urological Surgeon took some pictures during the surgery at my request… but he hasn’t emailed them to me yet. I’ll post them when I get them.

The surgery went “textbook” (which means perfect in Dr. Speak). They did an incredible job closing up the incision, I’m very thankful we chose to go to Seattle. I never got a total lymph node count, but the estimate is that around 50 were removed, with the largest being 4cm+. The only issue I had was some tape blisters around the incision. I have about 7 that are nickel sized that are recovery nicely now, but they were quite gross at the hospital.

I got home 7 days after the surgery in Seattle, which was pretty quick considering my body is still angry about the chemotherapy. We rode the train home so I could lay down in a sleeper car, which was awesome. I don’t know if i could have sat up for 8 hours (or the 5 that driving would have taken).

The Worst Part of In the Hospital Recovery

My pain level after the surgery was intense, but overall it was manageable thanks to drugs. I had an epidural and a “magic button” to control the pain. What I couldn’t control however was the pain related to my NG tube. If you’ve ever had one you know how awful they are, I’m just thankful I was a sleep when they put it in. An NG tube goes through the nose, past the throat, and into the stomach to remove acid and bile while my intenstines slowly “woke up” from the trama of surgery and anesthesia. It doesn’t really sound that bad, but man alive did it make my throat sore. I wasn’t allowed to drink water or eat ice chips, so I was at the mercy of a small green sponge on the end of a stick to sooth my throat. They gave me some medicated throat spray, but it wasn’t able to even take the edge off of the pain. I had to be able to pass gas before they would remove the tube, and I was soooooo relieved when that time came (get it… muahahaha).

Having the tube removed wasn’t a fun process, but at least it was quick. It felt like someone was pulling something out of my stomach through my nose… oh wait, that’s exactly what they did. :D It took several days for the pain to go away when swallowing. What amplified the awfulness of the NG tube was that it aggravated my throat which made me hack and cough phlegm, which REALLY hurt my abdomen.

What the Rest of My Recovery Looks Like

I spend most of my day in bed, with increasing amounts of time sitting up. I’m able to shower, and take a short walk each day. Hopefully within 2 weeks I’ll be up and moving like normal, but I’ve got a 3 month limit on lifting anything over 10 pounds. I’m also currently on a 20g of fat PER DAY diet. I’d say it’s the worst part of my at-home recovery, except that my wife and mom have been working incredibly hard to make delicious food. But man, I just want to eat fried bacon wrapped cheese cubes. Mmmmmm. Soon enough though. I’m on such a restricted diet so that fat doesn’t leak into my abdominal cavity from the sites where the lymph nodes where removed. I’ve got about a week left on it.

I’ll post about the actual results of the surgery, my pathology of the lymph nodes, and what the rest of my cancer journey will look like soon.

Filed Under: Cancer Tagged With: chemo, home, lymph node, rplnd, surgery

Surgery Tomorrow – Bowel Prep has Begun!

08/01/2012 By Luke 6 Comments

Overview of the next few days.

I won’t be tweeting from the operating room, sorry. But, I thought I’d share what the next few days are going to look like for us. I’m typing this on a train (but posting it from the hotel) that’s taking us to Seattle, beautiful foggy sunrise this morning. We’re decided on the train for several reasons. (1) We won’t need our car as we’re staying at the hospital’s hotel so we’ll save money on parking, (2) it’s awesome (3), it should be more comfortable on the way home even though it will take more time (I can go to the bathroom whenever I need to… lots of fluids!), (4) my dad came up with us for a few days, so he can jump on the train to head back easily, and (5) it’s awesome.

Bowel Prep.

Oh, and I’m getting some facial hair back!

If you watched the video I posted about the surgery, you saw them tossing my intestines around like a jump rope. Today is the day for making sure they are empty. The main reasons being: (1) as my body restarts from the anesthesia, my bowels will take a few days to start working. After several days of nothing “moving”, well, the body turns into a brick factory if you know what I’m saying. (2) if for some reasons they cut my intestines, the less that’s in there the better for minimizing the risk of infections. So, I can have breakfast today, but after 10am, it’s clear liquids only. At 2pm, I’ll drink a wonderful bottle of lemon flavored laxative. After that it’s just water until after surgery. It will likely be a few days until I get to eat any real food, while my bowels return from their slumber.

Surgery.

We check in to the hospital at 5:30am to begin preparing for my 7:20am surgery. Our Dr. said it should be at least a 6 hour surgery, with 2 hours in recovery. They’ll be removing around 50 lymph nodes from my left and right side near my spine in the retroperitoneal zone. After that I get moved into the ICU for at least 1 day, until finally making my way into a hospital room for another 5-6 days. We’ll be released from the hospital once I’ve made it to solid food, had a bowel movement, had all my tubes removed (like my catheter), and I’m able to move around a bit. The estimate around 7 days total, but my recovery might be slightly slower since my body is still recovering from chemotherapy… but I plan on being home to my children as fast as possible (without blowing out my staples).

I’ll try to keep updating things as they are happening, but I’m not sure what that will look like for me yet. I plan on resting and recovering.

Does that make sense? Any questions about my surgery?

Filed Under: Cancer, My Life Tagged With: bowel, cancer, hospital, seattle, surgery, train

They want my insides – Surgery in one week

07/26/2012 By Luke 13 Comments

What my CT scan showed

Many of you have been anxiously awaiting the results of the CT scan that I had this past Friday. Obviously by the time of this post, the results showed that my lymph nodes didn’t shrink enough to avoid surgery. My largest node pre-chemo was 2.5cm (not outrageously enlarged, anything above 1cm is on “the list”), and post-chemo it’s 2.1cm. The Dr’s suspected that this would be the case, as the most likely type of cancer that I have (teratoma) does respond to chemotherapy, but typically requires surgery to remove the dead leftovers. I know, that’s a little confusing.

Let’s allow a skunk be our metaphorical link to understanding. Suppose a skunk rudely traps himself underneath your house, and continuously blasts your dwelling with his nasty-cloud. After he refuses your lovely invitation to leave, you launch poison grenades at him for a week straight hoping it will kill him, leaving you a light snack. Well, the grenades work, but they only stop him from spraying your quaint residence. That’s awesome! But… he’s still in there, doing who knows what. He could actually be dead, and he’d either fade away into the dust of the earth, or begin to rot and fester. Or he may be slowly reloading, waiting for Thanksgiving dinner to bring out the big guns. Just to be on the safe side, you use your chainsaw to tear open your living room floor, and you get rid of that jerk.

We’re removing the jerk that is cancer. That’s the first analogy that came to mind, feel free to enjoy it.

That may sound like all bad news, but we didn’t find any new skunks… err, places where the cancer had spread. It was pretty unlikely that it would have spread during chemo, but I’ve been riding the “unlikely train” for a few years now with cancer. My lungs, spine, bones, and brain all look as wonderful as they ever have.

Why surgery is the next step

For complicated reasons, the lymph nodes behind my intestines are the first place where cancer spreads beyond the testicle. Once there, Mr. Cancer has a lot more options for places to go, as he can travel by land or by sea (body fluid or tissue). So to allow the him the opportunity to spread more is not good. The RPLND surgery has been apart of the testicular cancer cure process for a long time. It was on the table originally as an option during my first round of cancer. But at the stage I was at, surveillance was the better option.

After this surgery, I have a 3-5% chance of relapse during the first 3 years. After that the number drops quiet a bit, but I’ll still be having my blood tested and getting scans for the rest of my life.

What the surgery looks like

RPLND scar I’m scheduled to have the surgery in ONE WEEK. Our appointment today was quickly followed with several rush pre-surgery appointments, which made things really hard for the kiddos. We came back to our hotel and had lunch around 2:30pm, and miraculously we all took a much needed nap. We go back in tomorrow morning for the final pre-chemo appointments in Seattle.

It’s best to do the surgery right after my body has recovered from chemotherapy. They estimate that I’ll be in the hospital for at least 7 days, with the first in the ICU. I’ll be off of solid food for 3-4 days following the surgery, as my intestines will need time to unscramble themselves. The surgery is quiet intense, as there are a LOT of lymph nodes in the retroperitoneal zone. Plus, my swollen lymph nodes are on my right and left side, which is unusual as I only had cancer on my left side. I believe they’ll remove 50+ lymph nodes.

Below is a short (1-2 minute) video that overviews the surgery. It isn’t over-the-top-brutal, but you may not want to watching while eating breakfast… it will give you a much better understanding of the surgery than I can describe. The short explanation is: They make an incision from my ribs to my waist, and go skunk-hunting.

What’s next and how are we doing

McFadden Family So after recovering from surgery (2-4 weeks total), I’ll likely enter back into surveillance mode, with blood work and scans every 2 months for the first year with decreasing frequency each year after that. There’s a small small small chance that I’d need more chemotherapy (if they found active cancer cells in my lymph nodes, IE the skunk was fooling us all, and blasted us with skunk juice when we went to get him).

We are very much looking forward to being done with this. It’s been a long few months. We’re tired. We don’t like cancer. It causes to much anxiety, it’s ridiculously expensive, and it’s messing up our lives. That being said, we’ve been blessed by our supportive church, family, friends, and strangers. My wife is beyond a doubt my favorite person, seriously, she’s incredible. We’ve had great care the whole time, and are in the hands of the top Dr’s in the nation for this surgery. In rains on the just and the unjust, God is still God, God is still good, and cancer still sucks.

Speaking of tired, I’m going to bed without proof-reading this much, or confirming that it makes any sense. :D

Filed Under: Cancer, My Life Tagged With: cancer, chemo, rplnd, surgery