Yesterday morning, the lung doctor explained to K that the cancer had spread to his lungs. But that K's lungs sounded good. The doctor told him he could try not using the steroids and see if his lungs could take in enough oxygen using just the bronchiolators. While we were at the clinic, K was able to get a pneumonia shot but was told the shipment of flu shots had not come in yet.

The doctor went ahead and gave us new prescriptions to have on hand if K needs to stay on the steroid medicine. We have enough medicine to last a few more weeks and then I will have to figure out how we will get the prescriptions filled this time. I have heard of another organization in our area that helps pay for your medicine and I will be contacting them to see if they will help us. Most of the time you have to be unemployed to get help around here. If you make enough money to barely scrape by; they tell you to sell one of your automobiles. We applied for food stamps and because we have two vehicles, even though we are still paying for one of them, we were denied food stamps. They told us to sell one of our vehicles to buy food with; offering no suggestion as to how we both were to get back and forth to work to earn a living.

I am hoping K will decide to stop smoking but it is doubtful. I told him if he wants to stay on this earth for longer than the two to ten months the doctors have given him; he had better stay away from the cigarettes. I tried to talk with him again about starting to eat healthier to keep his immune system built up as the doctor suggested; but he just closed his eyes and ignored me.

He isn't using the oxygen daily and is not as alert as I have seen him when he takes it for a couple of hours a day. Maybe he doesn't want to be alert but rather sleepy so he isn't able to think. I don't know or understand, but I guess that is the way it is with everyone. I just feel so aggravated and helpless when I can't do anything to encourage him to take better care of his self.

We go to see the oncologist November 1st. Maybe we will hear if there are any other treatments that K can get to slow down the spread of the cancer cells.