Brown Family Reunion - Aug. 5-8

Do you remember when I used to update this blog on a regular basis? Neither do I. It has been that long. So let me catch you up on our Phil Brown family reunion that we held in the beginning of August.

It was SO MUCH FUN. So much fun that we have all spent the last few weeks recuperating from fun overload.

Here are a few photos to show some of our activities:

Boat Race in the Provo River

Some are too little to handle the river's current

Oh wait. Phoenix is the exception. She's pretty tough.

The boats are off. We use the term boat loosely. It is a decorated piece of wood.

Our boat catchers/judges

Our winner, Hudson. Note the water bottle attached with some duct tape. Maybe he is more like Grandpa Brown than we thought.

And speaking of Grandpa Brown - what was he doing throughout the festivities?

As we can see, not much as changed. For ANYONE that knows Dad, you know there is no where else he would rather be. Reading.

Four broken ribs? A mere flesh wound!!!

Dad Update

I finally saw Dad. With my own two eyes. I saw him and his chest tumor (which is still visible, if it has shrunk 80%, it must have been huge).

This past week every member of the Phil Brown family gathered together. We had our own reunion of sorts. The purpose was two-fold. 1) Have a family picture. 2) Get all of the siblings away with Dad to go over matters of family business. It was the first time the siblings were alone in almost a decade (without kids and spouses). Buffy had a wonderful friend who let us use their beautiful cabin for 2 days.

We accomplished both nicely. It was so fun to see all of the family. It was a little bit harder to see Dad. Although he has improved somewhat because of the initial treatment, he is still in a great deal of pain. He has a nurse that checks on him weekly. When she asked him about his pain level - he said his chest and leg feel better but his back was still at about a 9. This is with him taking Oxycotin and Valium every 4 hours. WHAT?????

He is needing a lot more help everyday. It is hard for him to climb the stairs and he needs a walker or cane. Dad is grateful for the help but I think it is hard on him to physically deteriorate. If you think about it, he has been pretty independent for 72 years of his life - this would definitely be a change.

Sorry to end this post on a sad note. I will post some pictures of the family and events at our mini-reunion. And if you are lucky - you can see some pictures of our sibling retreat.

Grandpa and Arden

For any of you that know Dad, you know that one of his best buddies is Arden (Misha's little girl). If she had a choice to play with anyone, it would probably be her Grandpa Brown. Which makes sense because she sees him almost every day. They have a fun little bond that is so sweet to watch. Dad is actually a superb Grandpa to all of his grandkids, but the story between Arden and Dad is the focus here.

Here is a picture with Grandpa and Arden at her birthday party.

When Misha took Dad for his biopsy, Arden came with them. Misha took Dad to the receptionist who asked him, "What are you here for?" At this point, Arden felt like it was her duty to inform the receptionist what the problem was and declared loudly, "He has OWIES. He has CANCER."

The response from everyone was laughter. Could they get any cuter than that?

Hole-y Moley!

One of the drawbacks of multiple myeloma are bone lesions. What that means to non-medical folk (like us) is that the plasma cells are reproducing too quickly in the bone marrow causing lesions (or holes for non-medical people) to form. More correctly they are called lytic lesions.

When you find one lesion on the skeletal system, the cancer is called plasmacytoma. When you find multiple lesions in the bones - it is called multiple myeloma. When Buffy went to the doctor to discuss the bone scan, she asked how many lesions Dad had. The doctor said too many to count! WHAT???? Basically his bones are in bad shape and he is in risk of breaking them quite easily.

The holes in his bones are different from osteoporosis. Instead of a weakening of the whole bone, or losing density - his just has random holes throughout his body - femur, skull, back, arms, pelvic bone, etc. Okay so I understand why the doctor didn't bother to count. Buffy said that when the doctor showed her the scan it looked like someone had taken a hole punch to his skeleton.

Treatment options are going to work on a few things:
1) Use medication to build up his bone strength.
2) Use radiation to shrink the 2 largest tumors - chest and pelvic bone.
3) Use medication to keep new tumors from forming and manage the ones he already has.
4) Try to control the overgrowth of plasma cells in his bone marrow.

If he does not respond as well as hoped to the treatment options above, he will opt to have a bone marrow transplant.

All in all, we still feel grateful. The doctor said that if you were going to have a stage 4 cancer - this was a great cancer to have. It responds well to treatment and the treatment is usually not chemotherapy. Lucky Dad?