A peaks and valleys sort of day.

A lot of progress was made yesterday by our dear, Jim. He was doing well enough to have the ng tube taken out of his nose, this was really great because it was causing him a lot of discomfort. (He still has the feeding tube, but that will come out soon, hopefully.) He no longer needs oxygen, and they were able to get him off most of the noisy monitors. Jim is still getting up to walk and can sit longer. In the course of his surgical recovery, these things are huge steps! We are so happy and grateful for the good progress! So that was a peak, and we were enjoying that peak, Jim and I even celebrated by taking an extra stroll around the hospital floor. While on that celebratory walk the Dr. caught up to us and said he had the pathology report in his hands and wanted to tell us. So right in front of the elevators on the fifth floor is where he told us (we did ask him to tell us as soon as he knew) that the report said it is for sure cancerous and 7 is the mitotic rate, and it is considered high and so he is in the high risk/high grade category. The Dr. said this so casually, as if we were talking about a score for the latest basketball game. Although the air had just been taken out of our sails, we answered in the same manner, casually. "Oh, okay, I see, well not what we had hoped, but we'll deal with it", Jim said. The casualness didn't seem to go along with the way I felt inside. The Dr. proceeded to tell us that he will have to go on the drug Gleevec for atleast a year. The side effects can be hard for some, but they can help him with those. "This is not something we will worry about until you are all healed and doing well from the surgery", he said. Well, I'm glad that he won't be worrying about it, I thought, because I know I sure will. So strange all of this is, so strange and unnatural it seems to me. Jim took it in stride, as always and just kept telling me "remember, peaks and valleys". I agreed. So to help you all understand, they don't give this sort of cancer called GIST a "normal" staging number like they do with other cancers. They take size, mitotic rate and the type of mutation and assess it and come up with categories. Low, Med, High. Once we meet with the oncologist again, (not sure when that is), we will know more about prognosis, etc. Our valley won't last long, we won't let it. Too much to look forward to. We are already looking ahead to our next peak which is, getting Jim home and out of this Hospital! Onward and upward!