July 26, 2011 The Visit

After leaving Millie in the morning for tests and X-Rays, I came in and met with Dr. Dahlgren and while I sat on the floor of the exam room with Millie resting on my leg, we talked about the future.

The only good thing is that we had caught it so early....but early turned out to be a relative term. And the X-Rays did not show any obvious organ involvement...also good.

Q-If we had not stumbled upon it, when would we have started seeing symptoms?
A-Probably within a month.

Q-Once she becomes symptomatic, if we do not do chemotherapy, how long does she have?
A-Maybe 2-3 months.

Alex was very clear and very sympathetic. She acknowledged how it was hard to look at Millie right then and believe the time could be so short. But once it begins, lymphoma moves quickly.

we only had two options: Treat the symptoms and keep her comfortable....and wait for the end. Or try chemotherapy, to try to extend the time we would have with her. If we opted to not do chemotherapy, then we would start treating with Prednisone and keep upping the dose to battle symptoms....but steroids have their own side effects, and Alex cautioned that if we opted for steroids now, and later decided we wanted chemotherapy, the chances of success were reduced. She also acknowledged that Chemo was expensive, something that my research had already uncovered. She felt like we were probably looking at around $5000.

I had her go ahead and make a referral to the oncologist, because I felt that however unlikely we felt the chemo option might be, we needed to have that input before deciding.