Gary Engstrom

On May 24th Gary started to notice that his skin was taking on a yellowish tinge. He didn’t think anything of it until it was really noticeable on May 26th. He went to the ER in Alexandria and they admitted him to the hospital that night. Once he got to the hospital they noticed that he had what they thought looked like cancer and transferred him by ambulance to the hospital in St Cloud. At this point they still didn’t know much of anything except that his kidneys needed to have stints put in to help drain the toxins from his body and that they saw tumors in the liver. He had stints put in his kidneys and they wanted to do a biopsy at the same time but had such a time getting the stints in that they were unable to do the biopsy at that time. The stints began working right away and his coloring started coming back. He had a colonoscopy to rule out colon cancer on May 28th. That came back clear, the next thing they wanted to do was a biopsy of the liver. They are still trying to pinpoint what type of cancer it is. They found tumors in the liver, but apparently cancer doesn’t usually start there. In order to treat the cancer effectively they need to know what form they are dealing with. While admitted to the hospital they performed many tests to determine what exactly was going on. Needless to say this Memorial Day weekend was not what we all had planned. I am so very thankful that Elaine is in Dad’s life and is there for him.

He was released from the hospital on May 31st with no real news as the test results were not going to be in for another few days. He would be having his kidney stints replaced with permanent ones in the near future. So this is a waiting game. Keep him in your thoughts and prayers.