Here I have managed to give another report only one week after the last one. I wish that meant John's situation has improved and I bring good news. I guess it means that life feels newsworthy at the moment, I am awake and (despite all the kind offers) I don't want to wake anyone at this time of the morning to talk. John is in the hospital with tetanus. Fortunately, we caught it fairly early (only his jaw had gone rigid not his whole body). Now I see why they call it Lock Jaw. He really can not move his jaw except for a fraction of an inch and then only with severe pain. He is getting IV anti-biotics and fluids. We don't know how he got it. He can not think of any injury and he has full inoculations with the most recent in January of this year. The GP said that he has only seen two cases of Tetanus in his career. One is still walking around as healthy as can be. The other died of it. Still, I'll take the odds on tetanus those for Pancreatic Cancer any day! In any case, he seems to be improving on the IV, but it may be as many as 14 days in the hospital. What concerns me most is that he can't really eat with his jaw like that. This compounds the other reasons that he could not eat: abdominal pain and lack of pancreatic enzymes from the cancer, nausea from the chemo, and lack of appetite from all of the above. With oral enzymes, pain medication, and anti-nausea pills he was able to make himself eat before. With appetite stimulants he was sometimes eating real meals. This tetanus really sets him back (back to a liquid diet).

Weight loss is a problem in late stage cancer 80% of the time, and Pancreatic Cancer is notorious for it. Many PC patients die of "wasting" before the cancer has had a chance to overtake them. (Then, of course many other cancer patients taking chemo die of secondary infections! Tetanus stinks any way you look at it.) Both Oncologists that John saw this week were extremely concerned about his weight loss. Now, he is on a liquid diet again. I am worried. In general, too, I guess things just seem more serious in the hospital. He walks around with that IV pole and wears that gown and somehow he seems really sick even as he recovers from the tetanus. I gave him a sponge bath yesterday morning. I guess I thought we would be 80 when we did these things.

In lighter news, John went to an oncologist at Cedars Sinai on Tuesday who found some potentially positive information. He says that there is a chance that John has a rare type of adenocarcenoma that is slower growing than the ordinary type. This would be good news in terms of prognosis. We won't know for sure until we have a pathologist specializing in cancer look at the slides of the biopsy. I picked them up from the hospital in Ventura on Thursday, thinking I would take them into LA Friday. Unfortunately, John went into the hospital and I did not make the trip. Still, we will know soon enough. My brother will deliver them to Cedars Sinai on Monday. In the meantime, I still have them in my purse. It surprises me sometimes when I open my purse and find the envelope with my husband's tumor in it. I reminds me of the antics that John and his brother played with their father's ashes. I don't know why the connection, but the memory still makes me smile. They were so irreverent (not disrespectful, but definitely irreverent)!

John does not really want visitors, so I'm sorry to say that you will just have to wait. I'll try to keep you posted.