We are preparing for discharge from the hospital now. We ended up moving to a private room around 6am and have spent most of the day trying to rest and recover from last night.

It was confirmed by a few rounds of labs that Andrew did not develop pancreatitis, and the CT showed his stent was in the correct place. The doctors’ assumption is that the pain and nausea came instead from general irritation from the stent replacement. He initially got IV pain meds in the ER but the pain is now fairly well controlled with Tylenol.

I messaged Andrew’s palliative care doctor, who asked the in-patient team to come by. We saw the social worker and chaplain Andrew spent a lot of time with back in June, and met the head of the palliative program, who Andrew liked. He advocated for discharge and for the right pain meds to be prescribed in case the pain gets worse at home. 

We haven’t spoken directly with his oncologist but his team is aware we’re here and looked at the CT report. They said any growth that stays within 1 cm is considered stable. I hope we can hear from his oncologist soon to confirm our plans for what’s next don’t need to change given the new tumor measurements. It’s still mentally and emotionally hard to see growth despite knowing it’s highly unusual to ever have CTs just 10 days apart to compare. And there is such a thing as pseudo progression, which is when tumors may appear bigger before they decrease in size.

Thanks to all who said prayers, texted, offered help, and showed up to stay with the kids with no notice. We are grateful not to do this without you.