These past few weeks have been hectic, worrisome, scary, lighthearted and miserable. There, I think that I've put it all in a nutshell.
After 4 rounds of chemo and constant complaints of shortness of breath my mother collapsed at her home and EMS had to come and take her to the hospital because my father was not able to lift her off the floor.
Dr.'s determined that she had fluid surrounding her lung which was making it very hard for her to breath. Now she'd been complaining about this ever since she had radiation and even though chest X-rays were taken as well as a CAT scan there was nothing being done to correct the situation. Well, to make a long story short...she ended up in ICU. It was a very, very scary time for all of us as well as her. To see the look in her eyes that she was afraid. Not that she is afraid to die..she's just not ready to die. She has a bucket list of things that she wants to see before she's done her time on this earth. Nothing earth shattering mind you. But her top priority is to make it to May 2014 to see her oldest grandchild graduate from Texas A&M University Vet School. I think she'd like to see a wedding as well but the Vet school thing is a pretty big deal.
Once mom got into ICU and stabilized they drained the fluid from around her lung. It was a lot...almost a quart and it was bloody. Now they told us it could be 1 of two things. It could be cancer causing this or something else. But when the test results came back it showed that there were no cancer cells in the fluid. Now nobody is saying anything about the radiation causing this but the family is pretty sure that the radiation caused this. She had a broken rib prior to radiation, then the radiation on her chest...I'm sure that the radiation caused a hemotoma on her lung which was irritated by the broken rib and viola..we have excess blood in the chest cavity. Makes sense to us...apparently not to the Dr.s. I think they are afraid in this day and age of a law suit...which wouldn't happen in this case cause my parents aren't those type of people but it would be nice if they would at least admit that we are in fact right about this. And to top it all off...the next time they drained her chest they got less blood and they kept saying it would come back. She had a tube inserted so that when she was released she and Daddy or any of us could drain her lung and we've done it a couple of times getting no more than maybe a tablespoon of liquid out. Looks like whatever happened corrected itself. But I think the worst part of this whole exercise was when a young Dr. came into my mother's room before she was released and told her to get hospice ready. She had maybe 6 months. What!!!! This was news to my ears. Who was this young Dr. and where does he get off saying this? I'm a realist. I know that my mother is going to die sooner than I would like to see her go...but 6 months....no, I refuse to believe it.
Her oncologist came in a while later and told her that she had lots of treatment options and she needed to get stronger before he could begin treatment...but mother didn't hear any of that...despite the fact that he has been treating her for over 15 years. She trusts him because he too has had cancer...but she still didn't hear him...she only heard the young guy.
Christmas to say the least was miserable in more ways than one. She didn't get to shop for presents, or wrap anything and this is her time of year. Christmas has always been so special because of her and the joy was taken out of it by some careless words said by an unfeeling Dr.
The day after Christmas my sister and I went in to see my mother and she was all ready to get hospice set up. She was talking about her funeral, what she wanted to be buried in etc.... We were both fighting the tears and daddy was beside himself. But I also knew that she "was not there" yet. I felt before anything about hospice was done that she should at least see her oncologist again. Nope, she was not going to go. But time can heal and by Wednesday she was ready to see the oncologist. He told her again that he would tell her when it was time to call hospice. He had another treatment that he wanted to get her started on and that all she had to do was get stronger so she could begin treatment again. Well, talk about doing a 360....she even whistled on the way back from the Dr.s. office.
If I was a guessing person...I don't know if she'll make it to May 2014, she's a strong determined woman of 81. I'm hoping that she does because then I will know that she attained the number one thing on her bucket list and she could die knowing that she accomplished that.
