Thanks for all of your support. This has been a rollercoaster week for me and my family.
We could see the SVC syndrome coming back with some of the swelling in his left arm and his right eye looked puffy again last week. But these symptoms actually look better now that he is in hospice. Perhaps it is because they are no longer hydrating him? Who knows.
Dad has been in Hospice since last Thurs, and they are keeping him heavily medicated. I guess that I thought that we would still have a week or so to talk with him and to watch some movies and talk about life for a while, but the hospice people immediately put him on a huge dose of morphine and stopped feeding him and giving him hydration. It was a unexpected, but my family trusts what these people are doing and we don't want Dad to be in pain, so I guess we will just have the memories.
I have been in contact with The Rockefeller University Hospital regarding a clinical trial (investigational only) regarding PLE and associated antibodies to help understand the immune response to the SCLC in PLE patients. They have requested a vial of blood from Dad to help their study, so hopefully some good will come out of what my Dad and my family have endured for the past 10 months. Maybe someday they will learn to harness the activity of these antibodies to stimulate some sort of immune response against SCLC.
http://www.rucares.org/clinicalstudies/ ... 200&cat=50
Keep up the good fight Dr. West!
Jim