[BY SUSAN]
OK, time to get a little fancy here with pictures. This is last evening's view from Peter's room at Duke. Looks like he'll have one more evening there, though he is MUCH BETTER today. But since it took a bit for the antibiotics to kick in, the docs want to be sure the drugs are doing their thing before they release him. He is in good hands, able to move about a bit (tethered to the IV) and he read his papers, ate, an napped already today.
Some of you have asked questions about the pneumonia and its relationship to the cancer. There's a lot we don't know, but we feel like it is good news that last week's downturn in his overall well-being (which was pretty good) is due to something treatable...i.e. pneumonia.
It is bacterial pneumonia, not viral, which means that he is not contagious. When Peter had surgery in 2012 they re-routed his digestive system - a procedure called an esophagectomy with gastric pull-through. You can look that up, but what it means is that he is more susceptible to aspiration issues than a person who has not had that surgery. And aspiration can cause pneumonia.
Since diagnosis of the recurrence on 10/31 Peter has not had any symptoms (that we know) as a result of the small tumor they found. And the latest scan, on 1/2, confirmed that there are no metastases.
All good news.
I am scrambling in the background here to re-arrange his plans for travel to Philadelphia (see earlier posts) and will try to keep everyone up-to-date on what is happening. For now I am grateful to see him much more like his old self this morning. He was even hungry.
That's the news for now.
Susan
Peter, so sorry to hear about the pneumonia. I was about to send you a message wishing you well in Philadelphia, when I saw this. Get well soon, both here in Durham and in Pennsylvania.
ReplyDeleteTalk to you soon.
--Neil