Tonsillectomy anyone?

Ok, so a few things have happened since I returned to work.
Gil had a follow up with Moffitt on August 21st. After being poked, prodded and scanned he met up with Dr. Ayala to find out how he's doing. Turns out that darned tonsil was enlarged again! From 7.5 to 11.6 (cm?...mm? don't know the unit of measure). And also 5 slightly enlarged lymph nodes in the chest. He was told it's something to keep an eye on, but the Dr. was not too concerned about it. Or so it seemed.

He had been coughing a lot, so they did give him pneumococcal conjugate vaccine to prevent a type of pneumonia that is common with stem cell transplant. After 2 days of a very sore arm, we noticed the coughing let up and the low grade fever he had been dealing with in the afternoons had stopped. I am hoping that has changed something! We will know a little bit more on that after his next follow up in November - which, by they way, will include a host of vaccines. Yup, he is starting the vaccination train the day before thanksgiving!! Yay!!

In the meantime...He had an appointment with Dr. Ball yesterday (9/5) and she's not real happy about that tonsil. How frustrating is it to treat this repeatedly, just to have that thing flare up again? Well, frustrating enough that he is going back to the ENT, Dr. Hood (that was today 9/6) and it looks like he have a tonsillectomy scheduled for Sept 18th. Finally looks like they are going to take this thing out and get a good look at it. Even the Dr. said it looked like he should have done that back in January after all.

So we feel like we are in a purgatory of sorts. Not sure if he is cancer free or not...did the stem cell transplant work or not...are we going to have to do this all over again (please, Lord, no!!)

His numbers are still doing well, although the white cells took a little dive in the last two weeks. And he's feeling pretty good these days; no dizzy spells when bending over or fever/chills late in the day.

I'll probably post something on the 18th after surgery.