Newest Update

After a long day at UAB today, unfortunately we don’t have much good news to report. We met with Carrie’s endocrinologist first thing this morning and he didn’t have too much to say. Carrie’s blood pressure seems to have finally stabilized and has been good for several weeks now. It was actually pretty low today (91/64), which is VERY low for her. But since it’s stabilized, the endocrinologist said to stop taking one of the 4 BP meds Carrie has been on to see if it still stays controlled. He also said to increase her Prednisone (steroid) to see if that gives her more energy. That was about the extent of the “good news”…

Carrie also had her CT scan this morning and met with her oncologist a few hours later for the results. And the scans show that the treatment is not working. The mass on her left adrenal gland has increased from about 4 cms to over 11 cms since the beginning of June. Combining that with the masses on the right side of her abdomen, they’re basically overcrowding her stomach/abdomen area causing her so much pain. The treatment isn’t working and her doctor actually feels like treatment is causing most of her problems, like fatigue, dizziness, and lack of energy. (Carrie was up to 11 Mitotane per day, which is a VERY high dose). Unfortunately, we’ve run out of options and her doctors want to concentrate more on making Carrie as comfortable as possible and basically giving her the best quality of life they can and taking her off treatment will hopefully do that. Her oncologist called the surgeon that did her surgery 2 years ago to ask his opinion, but after looking at her scans, he said he would absolutely not recommend surgery because she would more than likely bleed out on the OR table. Based on where the masses are and the blood vessels surrounding them, surgery is way too risky and Carrie more than likely would not survive surgery. Radiation is an option to help maintain her pain level-her doctor called the radiologist and is waiting to hear back from him. For now, we are talking about possibly admitting Carrie to the pain management unit of the hospital at UAB for 24-48 hours and basically try different pain regiments to see which one works the best. For the weekend, they told Carrie she can increase both her Morphine and Oxycodone as much as she needs, and he would check in with her Monday and see how she was doing, and if need be, put her on the waiting list for admission to the hospital.

This was obviously not the news we were hoping for today, but we’ll take things day by day for now until we figure everything out. We appreciate all of your continued thoughts and prayers and we especially need them now. The Lord has blessed us beyond belief up until now and we have faith that He will continue to guide us through this. We will keep you updated and let you know how Carrie’s feeling early next week.