The Diagnosis

Monday April 6th will be a day that will resonate with Garrett (and our Famiy alike) for the rest of his life. It was a day when, thinking he was just going to find out about a broken rib, he would find out something much worse. Cancer. The word we all cringe at when it is said. It now applied directly to him.

The diagnosis came by sheer luck. Dr. Grahmn thought to do a full chest x-ray to double check the pain in his rib. Anticipating a fracture he was shocked and sickened to look at the x-ray and see cancer spots in Garrett's lungs. Pale faced he entered the exam room where Garrett and Dad sat waiting. "It's not good" was one of the first things they heard and immediately Dad's heart sank. After the doctor explained what he saw in the x-ray they immediately had G-baby transfered over to the Cassia Regional Medical Center for further testing.

They started off with a CT scan of his body...what that revealed meant more bad news: Blood clots in his lungs. Immediately Dr. Grahmn called for an air transport team to life flight G-baby down to a hospital more equipped to deal with the events happing in his body. Unfortuately the air transport team would take too long so instead they assembled an ambulence transport team to transfer him to Salt Lake City

Upon arrival at the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray Utah he was met by a team of doctors: a team of 3 Internal Medicine Doctors, an Oncologist (cancer Dr), and a Urologist. These doctors immediately began working on figuring out what was going on.

The official diagnosis: Non-Seminoma Intermediate Testicular Cancer that has metastisized into his lungs and lymph nodes.

The normal treatment would be immediate removal of the cancerous testical and Chemo-Therapy. However, as you all know, G-baby is anything but normal. The blood clots are located in the lungs too close the heart for comfort therefore creating a problem for any surgery to take place. They decided against the removal of the testical and to move forward with Chemo-Therapy instead.

The plan going forward is that G-baby will start Chemo-Therapy here in Utah on Saturday. The chemo will take place after that up in Twin Falls. There will be 4 rounds of Chemo, each round lasting 21 days. Each round starts off with 5 days of two-hours per day treatments followed by one day a week treatments for the next two weeks. Then, 21 days later it starts all over again.

After all 4 rounds of Chemo they will take him to surgery to remove the testicle and then repeat all the CT scan's and chest x-rays to see where they are at. There is a really good chance that the four rounds of chemo will "melt" away the cancer. Please pray for that!