September 21, 2017

Cliff had a feeding tube that was successfully put in yesterday. They began slowly introducing food today. He's pretty happy about it but still very week and requiring quite a bit of pain meds. They are mentioning Sunday as a possible time to go home (whoop whoop). We will meet with hospice, home care folks and continue to monitor him. Two pretty good days!!!! Yay!!!! Thank you again for all the positive thoughts and prayers.

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Morning update 9/15/17

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       For those of you just finding out about our courageous husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend . . .   About two weeks ago, Cliff went to the doctor for a check up and x-rays since he had been losing weight and had a persistent cough. After a series of tests, the diagnosis was devastating and has brought us to where we are today. Cliff has stage 4 lung cancer which has rapidly spread into his lymph nodes in his neck, chest and abdomen. He is having an extremely difficult time keeping food and fluids down and is experiencing frequent pain in his abdomen. He is able to use oxygen to help him breathe easier right now due to fluid on the lungs.        Tuesday he had a tube put in his right side to help drain fluid build up on the right side and hopefully dry up his lungs. Wednesday morning the pain was so bad that he went to the ER where they decided that it was best to admit him over night to rehydrate him, help manage the pain and find out why he is unable to keep food d
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Friday, September 15th

I am certain I will not be able to list all the details because we consulted with several doctors today and they all had some of the same information, a bit of conflicting information and it covered Cliff's ongoing problem with eating and keeping anything down, (not nausea) and a couple new problems that showed up which include a bacterial infection in his blood and blockage of his kidney. There was an endoscopy, I believe it's called, where they went down his esophagus to find out what was going on. The doctors say the opening to his stomach is so very small because of the pressure from the lymph nodes surrounding his stomach and esophagus. There were several options presented but so far we have decided to go with radiation to try and reduce the size of the lymph nodes so that Cliff can eat again. It has been several days since he has been able to eat anything and it is REALLY frustrating because he is VERY hungry. The other problems include the bacterial infection and the k
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September 27, 2017

We were pretty excited about coming home today after a full 14 days in the hospital. Cliff was stabilized and Hospice and Palliative Care folks had assured us our transition and journey ahead would go smoothly with them at our side. It is difficult to share everything that happened today because it really was just one thing after another that went wrong!!! There were problems right after we arrived home, when our Hospice nurse arrived and we found out that none of the medicines that Cliff required in order to remain stabilized were delivered. He was due for several medications and after calling several pharmacies and having roadblocks each time, she ended up sending Tyler out to two of the pharmacies. It really is a very long story but the main problem was that Cliff began experiencing a lot of pain. The doctors had worked for three days to stabilized his meds and in just half a day home, it all was coming undone. There are quite a few more things that also went haywire with his PEG
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