back again
He told us that he uses four buckets to categorize initial diagnosis: autoimmune, viral/infectious, cancer and "other".
We sort of had our hopes pinned on the first two - which he was quick to eliminate, saying that it didn't appear to be autoimmune and if it were infectious it would likely have blown up in our faces by now.
This leaves two buckets.
No need to even point out why this sucks.
Our glimmers of good news lie in these things:
* He's been X-rayed and scanned and tested for everything they can think of, and everything has turned up negative.
* Viruses are always tough to detect and they always remain a possibility
* The small module on his adrenal gland. Although everyone has ascertained it to be an absolutely incidental spot, if it does turn out to be the culprit, he can have the gland removed without much drama.
* Nobody sees or feels anything on his lymph nodes.
Basically, in absence of anything obviously incriminating, Dr. K, has decided to take another look at these things:
* His iron deficiency, apparently it's quite rare for a guy his age to have it, and it could indicate something else.
* His very slightly elevated white cell count.
* Another look at his liver
* An upper GI scope ( and lower just to make sure)
* A cortisol/endocrine test for Cushing's Syndrome
* A possible sugar PET test
We will be at Mayo all week just to get through the barrage of tests he'll need. In the meantime he is weak, fevered, tired, and discouraged. It's fair to say that we are all a little discouraged. We don't even know what to hope for - do we hope they find something we can fight? Do we hope they find nothing? We don't know. Right now we just hope to get through the week. His tests are scheduled throughout the day, starting as early as 6:45 am and running until late afternoon.
Our immediate concern is just getting Yoda to and from school during Rico's appointments. We've had some wonderful help, but this juggling new normal is trickier than we thought- especially with a three-hour daily commute. I'm sure we'll find some balance. We got home tonight and Kooka had done Yoda's homework with her (and assessed it), Punk had started dinner and made sure they had after school snacks. Yoda fed the dog and made sure to give dad some extra hugs when he came home.
We're not sure what's happening, we just keep the love flowing and hope it's enough.
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