Posts by Suzanne Sawyer-Espinoza

There hasn't been a lot to report the past few days. Kendall got through the chemo on Tuesday really well and didn't seem to experience a lot of side effects. Things hit him more the next day, but he didn't have any really severe symptoms. We've been told that the effects will be cumulative, so we'll see how things go. Kendall is scheduled for more rounds of…

Everything seemed to go well with the chemotherapy today. They will be watching him very carefully for the next few days, but so far there haven't been any bad side effects. Tomorrow the sutures come out of Kendall's incision. Isn't that an impressive scar? (Promise that this picture is PG and well above his waistline - Kendall just has an unusually long torso.) The kids think it…

Kendall was all set to do his "rough" chemo today, had been prepped and taken his pre-meds, when they noticed that the chemo drug was actually expired. This isn't a common chemo drug that they regularly have on hand, so looks like this treatment won't be able to happen until tomorrow. So mostly just another day of waiting. On a positive note, Kendall's incision from the surgery…

Can you tell I was excited about that visit today? Seriously, it was amazing. I should probably do an update on the whole cancer thing too, though. Kendall hasn't had any negative side effects yet from the chemo he had on Friday. We were misinformed about how often he would be receiving which drugs, but after our treatment planning meeting we now have a much better idea…

I've mentioned before that one of the hardest parts of this experience has been that I am not allowed to visit Kendall at the hospital. This has actually been the longest we have ever been apart (well, since we've been married - there was that whole two year mission thing....). I know we've been very spoiled in that regard, but man have we missed each other! We've…

Not sure why it is listing the post date as 9-12-20, but it is actually about 9:00 p.m. on 9-11-20. I'm here typing at the computer while a Duo video call with Kendall is open next to me. He is doing his first real round of his first chemo regimen. It's good to be making progress! Kendall will do a dose every night for a week of…

So far my updates have focused on what's happening with Kendall at the hospital, but I wanted to take a minute to acknowledge some of the MANY blessings and miracles we have seen throughout this experience. I won't get to them all, but here are a few: -My mom has cancer and has been in poor health for the past several months. About a week before all…

This was a fairly low-key day at the hospital. Kendall did get his lumbar puncture today (it didn't end up happening yesterday because they wanted to have him start on an anticoagulant medication first). It ended up being a longer and slightly more complicated procedure than they had predicted, but Kendall got through it. His cancer team said that he will probably have several more in the…

Sorry, I've meant to post updates on here more regularly. Today Kendall had a lumbar spinal tap scheduled, which will look at if the cancer has spread to his spinal fluid and into his Central Nervous System. As a precaution, they are injecting chemo directly into his spinal fluid. We were told that type of chemo shouldn't have really bad side effects like nausea, etc. We're still…

I will try to keep this page updated regularly. At this point we are waiting for a lot of pathology reports to come back (I've been told they are expediting them, so hopefully we'll hear more today). We're especially anxious to get the results of his bone marrow biopsy. While his PET scan showed that he definitely has cancer in his bone marrow (and at least one…