Fighting Big C – The 2nd Time Around

Last June 2021, a big news really shocked our entire family. Our Mom’s cancer is BACK!! after 8 years of being free from it.

She is diagnosed currently with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma with Lung Metastasis Stage IV. For the past three months, she is already in and out of the hospital (now in her 5th confinement) and went through the following various procedures and operations.

• In her 1st confinement (June 6 to June 16), she underwent a thoracentesis since it was seen in her Xray and Chest Ultrasound that there is an accumulation of fluid in her left lungs. Then, after thoracentesis, her heart was seen also with fluid around it so they had to monitor it for 3-4 days again through performing 2D echo everyday just to checked if there will be no increase of fluid that might cause Cardiac Tamponade.

• In her 2nd confinement after two weeks of discharge (July 4 to July 11), there was again accumulation of fluid in her lungs, but this time, both lungs are affected already. So, she urgently had thoracentesis in her both lungs and the following day after it, her doctors decided to perform Pericardial Window (remove a small part of the sac around the heart to drain excess fluid from her heart) and put her pleural catheters in both sides (Right Catheter connected to her lungs and Left Catheter to her heart and lungs). After two days from the said operations, she had to go PET CT Scan to check the extent of cancer cells in her entire body.

• In her 3rd confinement just after 4 days (July 15 – July 25), we went back to her surgeon with a worry that no fluids are draining in her catheter and we are worried that the fluid accumulated again in her lungs. After consultation with the surgeon, he said that there was an infection in her left catheter, and he advised us to do Xray and Chest Ultrasound again on that day and if there’s fluid accumulation we have to go directly to ER to do suction on her pleural catheter. When we were in ER already, the resident surgeon did the suction but it did not work, so, they had to insert a medicine (Reteplase) to dissolve the clogs in her catheter. 30 mins after the said medicine was injected, her pain continuously increasing, and we noticed that her Pulse Rate was so high and that alerted all the resident doctors to transfer our Mom to an urgent room in ER just infront of the doctors station to closely monitor her. They place medical apparatus to Mama immediately such as Cardiac Monitoring (due to super high heart rate which maybe a sign already of cardiac arrest) , Blood Pressure Monitoring (since her BP was declining), Oxygen Monitoring, etc.. The doctors immediately decided to undergo again another Operation to insert another Chest Tube in the left lungs since the fluid changed its location. She was inserted too with IJ Catheter in her neck where all the medicines will be administered since Mama’s veins are too small causing it to easily burst. After the operation, she was brought to ICU for five days to closely monitor her heart condition. Then on the 6th to 10th day, she stayed in a regular room where she was doing physical therapy twice a day.

• During her 4th confinement (from August 16 to September 4, 2021) where she was really gasping for air. At first, we were not accepted in the Non-covid ER since our Mom had symptoms of similar with Covid-19; so they have to transfer Mama to Covid ER. RT PCR was performed and thank God that she is negative. The difficulty of breathing continues despite that her lung fluid is not that high volume to cause dyspnea to her. So her pulmonologist and we requested already an oncologist in The Medical City as her long time Oncologist Doctor is in St Lukes, they advised to perform again another Chest CT Scan to have a comparison on how is the cancer cells spreading in her lungs. When we saw the results yesterday, we are all drowned that it now so severe to the extent that the Oncologist told us if we will do nothing to her, she will only have days to live. So now, we will take the chance we have (even its small, at least there is still a chance), to undergo again another Chemotherapy. Risk is always present knowing that she is super weak now; but we wanted to grab this risk instead of waiting and looking her deteriorating every hour which is really breaking our heart.

• Here come her 5th confinement (since September 11) wherein all her blood components dropped so she is needing a lot of blood transfusions (12 bags of platelets; 3 bags of hemoglobin; and 6 bags of plasma).

And now, we are knocking on your doors for a little help that you may extend to our family since my Mom needs to stay in the hospital to really be of under the care and close monitoring of her doctors. Any help is extremely appreciated and will be a great aid for our Mom to regain her sweetest smile.