Barbie Murray

Barb’s story

 

Barb had not been feeling well and thought she had the summer cold that had been going around. On Sept. 12th she went to after-hours care because this cold just wasn’t getting any better.  They diagnosed her with pneumonia and prescribed antibiotics. On Saturday Sept. 17th she woke up at 4:00am with bad pains in her stomach that went around to her back left shoulder.  We went again to after-hours care, they did very little and recommended that we go the Urgency Room or the ER at the hospital. We went to the Urgency Room and they started running tests with the first being an x-ray.  The radiologist didn’t like what he saw and recommended that we get a CT scan.  Once the CT scan was completed we waited about 15 minutes and the doctor came back in to give us the worse and totally unexpected news, that Barb had cancer the radiologist said it looked to be in her pancreas, lymph nodes and lungs.  She was given some pain medication and we were sent to United hospital.  At United they kept her comfortable with pain medication and we met with many doctors.  On Sunday Sept. 18th they took her down to drain the fluid around the lungs.  The first time they took her down there was some mix up in the order and it did not get drained.  The order was fixed and she went down at around noon and this time they were able to drain .8 liters of fluid.  The fluid was sent to a pathologist to see if they could determine the source of the cancer.  This helped with the pain and she slowly stopped taking pain medication.    On that Sunday we met a few more doctors and started getting her ready to be released from the hospital.   Sunday we got home in time to eat dinner, Barb ate and immediately felt very dizzy and got sick.  She went to be bed and questioned if she was ready to be home.  Monday Barb was feeling a little better and we started getting calls to schedule some of the tests.  On Tuesday Sept. 20 she went in to get a PET scan test done and on Wednesday (Sept. 21) we meet with the oncologist to discuss the results of the PET scan and the lung fluid.  When we met with the Oncologist we got more bad news, the cancer is advanced and is in many different organs (lungs, pancreas, lymph nodes, adrenal glands and her ribs).  They discussed that they still do not know the origin of the cancer and would like us to have a MRI of the brain to see if it is there as well and do a biopsy of some affect lymph nodes in her lower back.  We setup an appointment for Friday Sept. 30 to have a biopsy done to try to determine the origin and to do the MRI to see if it has spread to the brain.  On Wednesday October 5th we met again with the oncologist to talk about the findings from the 2 tests.  The Biopsy did not give very clear information, it looks like the cancer originated from somewhere in the gynecological region but they are not seeing cancer there now.  The MRI is showing 3 spots where cancer is in the brain. The oncologist labeled Barbs cancer as stage IV carcinoma and was given about 6 months to live.