The Mayo Clinic Maiden Voyage

Posted by Bill:

The Mayo Clinic – Chapter One

We arrived home from Mayo just before 11pm last night after two days of tests and a comprehensive consultation. Here is a brief summary of the last two days and what the next steps will be.

We arrived in Rochester after leaving our children in capable hands and left for the ~250 mile venture to Rochester. Interestingly, the fastest trail to Rochester from our home in Bettendorf is through Waterloo, Iowa (our home from October 2005-May 2008) so it felt like we were passing familiar terrain for a good portion of our trip to Minnesota. We arrived shortly after midnight early on Wednesday morning. We made the venture to the Mayo campus to find this world class facility in the middle of a small very typical mid-western town. This town of ~100,000 was originally a stop point between two river cities (Twin Cities and Dubuque, IA) and as the result of a Tornado in 1883, William Mayo, built onto a family medical practice to establish a hospital to care for those who were injured in that storm. Since then the Mayo has developed into a world class medical facility. It is the first and largest integrated nonprofit medical group practice in the world, employing more than 3,800 physicians and scientists and 50,900 allied health staff. It spends over $500 million a year on research. (Wiki – Mayo Clinic)

Day one was test day - bloodwork, MRI, consultation. I have never experienced an MRI before so I asked if I could go with Allyson so I could meet the GE Machine that would help with the procedure. I also learned that the machine is not a quiet, serene experience. I found the following clip to better understand Allyson’s explanation of the adventure, except her head was in a cage to hold it still.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oI9YnhPNcQ

We found a quant place for an early dinner and waited patiently for day two.

Day Two started with a PET Scan, (positron emission tomography scan). It is a type of imaging test. It uses a radioactive substance called a tracer to look for disease in the body – in Allyson’s case cancer tissue. After the PET Scan we met with Dr. Villasboas and Dr Markcovic to discuss the situation. After a comprehensive review of Allyson’s medical history we discussed the cancer. We learned that the PET scan showed the cancer spreading to her brain, her left tonsil, and some tissue adjacent to her diaphragm – in addition to the tumor that we already knew about in her left lung. The tumor in the left lung was applying pressure on critical air passage that created infection and brought the pneumonia (Dr called it obstructive pneumonia). We were told if the tumor was shifted even slightly it may have continued to go completely undetected. So, in this case pneumonia brought the cancer diagnostics so we are grateful. The treatment plan will come in three phases.

Phase 1: They can’t treat the cancer until they get rid of the infection. So, Allyson is on heavy antibiotics and they will do a procedure to drain her lung of infection next week. They will also do a small procedure on her tonsil.

Phase 2: Radiation. They will treat the different tumors will different kinds of radiation. We don’t know all the details of this now, but will learn more in two weeks when we meet with the neurosurgeon and the radiologist oncologist.

Phase 3: Drugs. Chemotherapy will not help Allyson, so she will have a new type of drug, immunology. It is basically where they turn your own immune system into Superman and try to kill the cancer that way. These are all new drugs and some patients are having great results, living longer than two years, but they don’t really know how Allyson will respond. They are doing further testing on the biopsy to see which if any of these drugs might work. We are hopeful that Allyson will respond to these new drugs, so that is where we need your faith and prayers. The melanoma research field is well funded and a lot of exciting things are happening, so that is all good news for us.

We are both saddened and encouraged after going to Mayo as we try to figure out what this all means for our family. We realized that this is going to be a long marathon.  Thank you for your continued faith, prayers and service.