rough.

Disclamier- This is going to be a very long post. I feel that since it was such a long day it deserves a long post but by all means if you just want to hear what Dr. Foster says skip to the Star portion.

Today was a rough day. Very rough. Not because we got bad news in fact it was good news but just the circumstances that surrounded the Dr's appointment.
I will start at the beginning.
Its a 4 hour drive to Indy, we left very early because there was supposed to be bad weather on and off. We really didn't want to miss this appointment, so we left at 7am. As we drove the weather was actually very nice, traffic was scarce and we were making great time. We were about 45 minutes outside of Indy and we had time to burn so we found a little mall and walked around for an hour or so. It was nice to get out of the car and stretch our legs. We got back in the car and started driving again. About 15 minutes into the drive Drew started to get severe pains on the right side of his chest under his rib cage. With every breath it was very painful.
We made it to the hospital/doctors office, and we trying to decide what to do, go up to the doctors office ( we were still about 2 hours before out appointment time) or head straight to the Emergency Room. We decided to head to the doctors office to see what Dr. Foster thought we should do and for the fact that we had NO idea where the ER was at this hospital. We got to the office and explained what was going on, they called back to the nurse at the office and she said to head down to the ER. A Very nice lady showed us where to go and we headed to get things checked out, hopefully we would be back in time for our doctors appointment. The ER doctor thought that Drew might have a blood clot in his lungs (when someone has cancer they are at an increased risks for blood clots). They started an IV, drew labs and brought him down for a CT of his lungs.
***After all that was done, they said we could head up to Dr. Fosters office have our appointment and then come back down to hear the results. A gurney ride through the maze of Indiana University Hospital later and we were at Dr. Fosters office and only 5 minutes late. We waited for quite awhile, and finally Dr. Foster with a surgical resident came in to talk with us. He truly is an amazing physician and are really lucky to have him involved in Drew's case. He has an ability to make you feel completely at ease. He started by talking about the nodules in Drew's lungs. He  doesn't believe that they are cancer, he believes that they are Bleomycin Toxicity. Drew was on Bleomycin as one of his chemo drugs and it can cause irritation/toxic affects to the lungs. He believes this should go away on its own in a while, which is very exciting news, no new cancer! Then he moved on the the surgery itself. He thinks it should only take about 2 and half hours, (much shorter than all the information we had been reading online) and will be in the hospital for 4 days and will take 4 weeks for recovery. It will be a painful surgery and we knew that going in but hopefully we will find the right combo of medications to make him as comfortable as possible. Once the tumor is out, they will biopsy the tumor and see what the next steps is. Dr Foster believes that it will be either Teratoma (a benign type of tumor which grows a lot with testicular cancer) or dead cancer both of which we will not need chemo after the surgery! If there is still active cancer in the mass then Drew might have to have a few rounds just to make sure it is all gone but Dr. Foster doesn't think this will be the case. YAY! We are super excited about all this information.***
After all this exciting news we still had to head back down to the Emergency room to hear whats going on with this new pain. We sit and wait for quite some time when Dr. Foster shows up in our ER room! He had taken a look at the new CT scan and told us that there was a blood clot in Drew's lungs but it has been there for a while. It was on the CT scan from December that we had gotten. He didn't think it was anything to serious but would talk with the ER doctor about what to do. After they talked  they decided to give Drew Lovenox which is a blood thinner down in the ER and we will have to give Drew 2 shots a day til the surgery to make sure the pesky clot doesnt cause any more problems. They also wanted to do a leg ultrasound to make sure he doesn't have any more blood clots in his legs which could travel to his lungs. Another hour later, it looked like he possibly has another clot in his left leg.
6 hours later we were FINALLY ready to get on the road and head back home.
It was one of the scarier drives I've ever encountered. We were all so tired (Drew, my mom and I) but we really wanted to get home and sleep in our own beds. I was going 20-40 mph most of the way home and at times visibility was about 5 feet in front of the car. It took us close to 6 hours to get home but we made it. It was a long, incredibly stressful day but at the end of it, we got good news and that's all that matters.