How Merlynn was diagnosed

Merlynn hasn't felt sick at all! In fact, he's never even had a cold since I've known him. However, he's had high blood pressure for several years. During the past few months, his blood pressure has been out of control. His primary care doctor prescribed several different medications, none of which worked for more than a day or so. Eventually, his doctor sent him in for an MRI to determine if something was wrong with his adrenal glands which could be causing the problems with his blood pressure.

When we received the results, Merlynn's kidneys and pancreas appeared normal, but he had "multiple lesions of the liver, with mass effect, highly suspecting metastatic disease". In layman's terms, this means "liver cancer".

Of course we were highly concerned. We knew what the words meant. We were told however, that this could just be some tangled blood vessels. We were so hopeful! The doctor ordered a CT scan and biopsy. The CT scan results definitely showed "innumerable masses" in his liver, but the doctor still held out hope they could be tangled blood vessels. He was about to send us home and was going to have us come back in six months and check for changes, when he discovered an old MRI from 2004 when Merlynn had had a kidney stone. His liver did not show any signs of lesions at that time, so the doctor was again concerned. He said people with tangled blood vessels don't get them late in life. They are in the liver by the time they are teens. Therefore, he thought we should proceed with the biopsy. Even after the biopsy, the doctor could see no "visible signs of cancer". Again, we were so relieved!

Sadly however, the final results were not as good. When an expert pathologist looked at the biopsy, he did, in fact, find cancer in Merlynn's liver cells. This is a rare form of cancer which is very hard to diagnose. The doctor told us it was time to see an oncologist. We received this official diagnosis on October 3.