As Nelson wrote in his last blog post, he’s looking forward to the scans that are scheduled to happen this Wednesday. It will have been six weeks since he started taking the immunotherapy pills (two each day), and the upcoming scans will be a moment of truth: Are the pills working or not?

In recent days Nelson has been feeling almost like his old self, breathing well without extra oxygen, cutting back on the pain pills, sleeping less, and dealing with only mild nausea. But as is true of this cancer, no matter how good he feels, there’s always a new crisis quietly brewing in the background.

On Friday, September 16, he, Ann Sophie, and Will drove the 80 miles to Luke’s house to spend a quiet weekend away from the apartment and from all things medical. But during the night, Nelson spiked a fever (102.7) accompanied by chills so powerful he shook all over. His oxygen slipped to 80 with a heartbeat of 160.

 On Saturday, the high fever and chills returned, prompting them to call back to Mayo’s for a doctor’s opinion. Their advice was for Nelson to head for the ER…again. So they left Luke’s in a rush, and he was checked into Emergency by late afternoon.

It was another nine hours before doctors finished all their tests and had the results in hand. Since his numbers seemed to be where they’ve been recently, many in the normal range, they weren’t sure what was causing the fevers, chills, fast heart, and low oxygen.

A thousand mg of Tylenol brought the fever down, but they hesitated to let him go without a reason for his symptoms. They did have a couple of ideas, though. The doctor told Nelson, “These pills you’re taking (immunotherapy) are hard core drugs.” In other words, it’s possible the weeks of taking them have accumulated somehow to now cause his body to react negatively.

Their other idea was that his cutting back on the opioids might be causing the same withdrawal symptoms as any addictive drug would cause.

Nelson hoped not to be admitted to the hospital again, and though the doctor suggested an overnight stay for monitoring, he chose instead to head home. But that wasn’t the end of it.

Today the fever and other symptoms have returned, and though Ann Sophie urged him to return to the ER, Nelson wanted to battle it out at home. They did call the doctor, who suggested they “pause” the immunotherapy pills for now. Nelson has four appointments at the Clinic this week, and as always, the medical staff will be current on all that’s occurred in these last couple of days.

While these new negative developments hang over Nelson and Ann Sophie, they did get some good news at the ER. A scan showed that the initial tumor, the one that has been causing Nelson to cough till he wretched, has shrunk by nearly half. We like to think that surely those powerful little pills are, indeed, beginning to overwhelm the cancer. His coughing has almost completely stopped.

Another plus is that his severe neck pain of a couple of weeks ago is gradually improving. They don’t know conclusively if it was a broken bone or cancer in the spine, but whatever it was, it’s been able to heal itself. This is refreshing news.

And so we await this week’s appointments, hoping for new hope—and a very positive moment of truth.

“Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.” (Ephesians 6:10)