Larry Patrick

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Larry was planning on having his knee replacement surgery on June 21, 2016.  In order to do that, he needed medical clearance from his doctor.  Previous to this, Larry had been fighting a bad cough for many weeks.  We were thinking it was a chest infection.   His doctor ordered a chest x-ray, which came back negative, and put him on an antibiotic.  After 2 weeks,  and feeling no better, the doctor prescribed another antibiotic, which again did nothing to alleviate his cough.  A second chest x-ray was ordered, and this one came back showing a lesion on his left lung.  This led us to a pulmonary doctor who scheduled a CAT scan and PET scan about 10 days apart in June.  Having the results from the 2 scans, a bronchoscopy was ordered in the beginning of July.  This procedure found a tumor in the lower lobe of his left lung, with a malignant lymph node close to the tumor.  A second lymph node, which was called 'suspicious', was higher in the lung, close to his heart.  A second bronchoscopy was done near the end of July to get more samples from the 'suspicious' lymph node, so they could figure out for sure whether it was cancerous.  The sampling of those cells came back negative.  We thought that was a good thing, and we'd only have to be concerned about the tumor and lymph node in the lower part of the lung, which could possibly be removed surgically.  However, the doctors could not ignore the upper lymph once being called 'suspicious'. 

In the beginning of August we met with an oncologist for his opinion of all the test results.  The very next day we were able to get a second opinion from a lung oncologist from Karmanos.  Even though both opinions were very similar, we decided to go with the doctor from Karmanos, who we immediately felt a strong connection.  And we are so glad we did!

 Larry's sister, Carole has been with us every step of the way.  I felt we could use an extra set of ears, just in case we missed something.  She has been that and so much more...our rock! 

It was decided that the best course of action would be to do radiation and chemotherapy together.  Larry's first appointment was set for August 29th.