Posts by Suzanne Sawyer-Espinoza

I've put off writing this post because it's been a pretty rough week. It's a balance between wanting to keep people informed, while also trying not to share Kendall's every little personal medical detail for the whole world to read. Kendall did get admitted Wednesday of last week for his next course of chemo and he's still in the hospital. His body did not respond well to…

We did get the results of Kendall's biopsy, and the mass in his lungs was not malignant. Great news! It does look like some sort of infection (but thankfully not COVID), and the doctors will be giving him an anti-fungal medicine this week to try to treat it. An MRI revealed that the activity on his spine (and the back pain he's been having) was most likely…

First off, I know that the Meal Train site has a discloser at the top that recommends restaurant meals or no contact delivery due to COVID. HOMEMADE FOOD IS GREAT!! However, we really would prefer that people cancel if ANYONE in their home has ANY symptoms of illness. I cannot overemphasize how careful we have to be about germs right now (and for the foreseeable future), particularly…

Kendall had his PET scan yesterday, and the initial results showed a large mass in his lungs, new activity on his spine, as well as new activity in his thigh. Not what we were hoping for, of course. About two hours after Kendall got home from doing the PET scan we got a call from his doctor saying that they would need to admit him as soon…

Due to a mix-up from the hospital Kendall was unable to get his PET scan on Friday. It has been rescheduled for this coming Monday. We did, however, learn more about what his chemotherapy regimen will look like with his Philadelphia positive diagnosis. We were under the impression that he would do another course of chemo, possibly followed by radiation and most likely a bone marrow transplant.…

With extra appointments and an unexpected blood transfusion on Saturday, Kendall ended up needing to be up in Salt Lake at the hospital on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this past week. Even so, this did feel like a much easier week because he hasn't had any chemo treatments since last Monday. It's amazing how much better he feels without actively putting poison into his body…

Today's appointments and procedures were all with neurosurgery. Isn't this X-ray of the hardware in Kendall's spine impressive? This side image was taken earlier today. We knew that his oncology team was going to publish about Kendall's case, but today we learned that the circumstances around his back surgery were also extremely rare (only eight previously published accounts of similar cases). They asked for (and received) permission…

Kendall has now finished his first full round of chemo and will get a "break" for two weeks (last week was technically the first one). Of course, that break this week looks like *only* labs, a lumbar spinal tap with chemo infusion, chemo pill, PET scan, bone marrow biopsy, meeting with the neurosurgery team and getting back X-rays and possible back brace adjustment, as well as other…

Yes, we took the plunge and shaved Kendall's head last night. It was a bit overdo, since he had reached that stage of chemo treatments when handfuls of hair would be left on the floor after each shower, found on his pillow, or the dandruff of hair on his shirts. Clara declares Dad's head is "fuzzy." Kendall did have his PET scan on Thursday, and we got…

I apologize that it's been a bit since my last update. We've had a few new developments since then. On Saturday evening Kendall starting having some (new) back pain and spasms that could be pretty intense. They continued through that night and into Sunday morning, when I finally called the on-call Hematology Fellow for the weekend to see what they recommended. He said that we needed to…