Can we get some actual details?

I attended a couple parties this weekend and came to the realization there is a lot of misinformation about Meghan’s current diagnosis/prognosis.  Meg and I thought it would be a good opportunity to take some time and show a high level view of what has occurred thus far, specifically, why is Meghan in the Baltimore area?

Here is the timeline since early May.

Early May 2012 - FAP Diagnosis in Dubois

May 2012 - Tests, Scans, and Surgery Prep

6/16/12 - Married to Matt, short Honeymoon in the Poconos

6/28/12 - Colectomy and ileostomy at UPMC Passavant

7/5/12 – Cancer diagnosis and staging

7/6/12 – Matt heads back to Afghanistan and Meg is discharged from UPMC

7/16/12 – ER visit and hospital stay for dehydration in Dubois

7/18/12 – Meetings with oncologists at UPMC

7/20/12 – Diagnosed with Hand, Foot and Mouth disease. 

7/23/12 – Second opinion meetings with Johns Hopkins teams

7/23/12 – Meetings with IVF Clinic

7/27/12 – Move down to Annapolis, begin hormone treatments for IVF

8/3/12 – Matt returns back to Baltimore from Afghanistan, in time for egg fertilization

8/8/12 – Port placement completed at Johns Hopkins

8/10/12 – Egg harvesting completed

8/13/12 – First day of chemotherapy (FOLFOX) starts at Johns Hopkins

1/21/13 – Chemo end date (hopefully)

So here is the deal.  Meg has been diagnosed with Stage 3 Colorectal Cancer.  They were hoping that everything was contained in her colon when they took it out, but out of 80 lymph nodes removed with the colon, 16 were positive.  The good news is that cancer had not spread into the margins of tissue that were removed in the surgery.  Cancer has not shown up on the scans, but knowing it is in the lymph system buys Meghan a ticket for chemotherapy.  Dr. Azad always says "buys her a ticket" like she is jumping on a carnival ride, not sure that is the best choice of words.  

The standard FOLFOX regimen for fighting colorectal cancer is actually pretty well tolerated.  It won’t make Meg noticeably lose her hair, but there are side effects.  One that isn’t immediate but there, is the potential for the Oxyplatin to affect her ovaries and egg production following treatment.  To mitigate that risk, Meg had eggs harvested before chemo started.  She was hoping for a lot more than what she got, but some are better than none.  It just so happened that the timing worked perfect, because they wouldn't have delayed chemo to have that done.

She has about 6 months of chemotherapy ahead of her at Johns Hopkins.  Matt is going to be stationed in the immediate area there, so although she could have completed treatment at UPMC or even Dubois, she will likely stay in the Baltimore/Annopolis/DC area. 

Following chemotherapy, Meg will be a candidate to lose her ileostomy bag, referred to as a reversal.  It is a burden that she will be glad to shed.  That is a relatively easy surgery (compared to colectomy) but she will likely have to go through the whole process of starting on liquid diet and add new things slowly.  If she would run into problems with that procedure, which is possible, she has some other options which are better than her current situation. 

Most people wonder how Meg is handling all this.  It has been a hell of a couple months for Meg, but she has been handling it really well.  Some days she gets down and we have to remind ourselves how much she is processing in such a short period of time.  Before she started this journey, I would have wondered how she would handle any one of the circumstances she has faced, but she has surprised me.   

Another subject that most people don’t like to talk about is money.  How the hell can she afford all this?  First of all, by the grace of God, Meg and Matt decided to get married in a hurry not realizing what was out in front of them.  Based on that, Meg has been on his insurance.  I wanted to punch them both when they told me they were getting married so soon, but it was a reminder that God has a little better idea of what is going on than I do.  On the other hand, there is a lot of gas money, OTC medications, living expenses, IVF clinic expenses, etc. which are adding up.  We have kicked around the idea of a fundraiser, but Meg wants to know for sure she needs to ask for help before she does.  I can’t blame her.  Since she has been so busy over the past couple weeks, that has been put on the backburner, but I have offered to help her start a spreadsheet to organize her expenses.  Hopefully, more will be happening on that front in the future, because surviving the disease without bankruptcy seems to be a pretty lofty goal from what I read.

What is her prognosis?  Statistics are funny, it seems that they always come with all kinds of qualifications right?  If you look at her staging, she has a slightly better than 60% chance of surviving 5 years.  That seems pretty bad right?  The reality though is she is an odd duck.  Most people are 60-80 years old when they have this type of cancer.  That means two things, one is that they lower the success rate even if they die from something else, two is that they’re bodies are less likely to fight like a young person’s.  The reality is that Meg has a much better chance and things look promising.  The FAP diagnosis which isn’t talked about much will mean that she will need to be vigilant and will likely fight cancer again after this hurdle is cleared, but the good news is that it will likely be caught very early due to monitoring.  That is a “lets cross that bridge when we get there” kind of thing. 

I am attaching a photo of Meg.  I did some minor airbrushing to get rid of the incision she has from her port, just because I thought she would be more comfortable with that.  She looks way better than I look at 6:00am in a Myspace style phone picture.  She has come a real long way since just a couple weeks ago when she was flirting with the 110lb mark and not eating.

-Kalen