Randy McFarland

First post: Nov 28, 2018 Latest post: Jan 29, 2019
Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.

Randy was diagnosed with Adenosquamous non small cell Lung Cancer at the end of December 2017, a very aggressive and rare type of lung cancer. He had relatively few symptoms leading up to this diagnosis, other than a persistent dry cough and pain near the left shoulder blade on his back. A tennis ball sized tumor was found and needle biopsy performed. He had surgery in early January 2018 to remove the entire upper left lung lobe. More cancer was discovered at that time so part of his lower left lobe was removed as well. Since then it has been an arduous journey of Chemo, radiation, immunotherapy, feeding tube, IV port placement plus, more recently, the installation of a pain pump. He has been under aggressive treatment since Feb 2, 2018....4 different chemo drugs, plus immunotherapy, and a total of 30 days of radiation. Every 3 months he had a PET scan to evaluate disease progression or eradication. Through it all, he has been as upbeat and positive as possible, in spite of the never ending excruciating pain. We’ve tried not to let this thing stop us from doing what he/we wanted to do. Sadly, due to all the pain and pain drugs, he hasn’t flown his plane since right before the needle biopsy last December, but he was actually able to saddle up and ride his horse one time in June. We have remained as active as possible, taking several trips during this past year and were even able to do two timeshare trips, the most recent to Hawaii with some very dear friends in early November. While in Hawaii he started having bad stomach pains. A few days after our return, he was in for chemo and mentioned the stomach pains to his oncologist. An abdominal scan was ordered and we found out that there was significant disease progression with involvement of his liver, adrenal glands, lymph nodes and intestines, to the point that the oncologist knew that everything they have done has failed to stop this horrible disease. He was taken off all treatments and admitted to hospice care at home the day before Thanksgiving. We don’t know how much longer we have on our life journey together, but we know now that it will end sooner rather than later. I am doing my best to keep him comfortable and as pain free as possible, and I will attempt to make as many journal entries as possible to keep all of our friends and family updated. Again, we appreciate your love and support in this difficult time.
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