What's Going On

I've been quiet here for the last month. There hasn't been any action on the cancer front because of the stuff going on with Mom's kidneys, except a discussion about chemo options for when the kidneys settled down enough, and this blog has been mainly about Mom's cancer fight.

Well, there's good news, and there's bad news. The good news is, the cancer fight is over. It's a tie. The bad news is, Mom has a partial bowel obstruction, a kink in the 10 feet of small intestine that she still uses. If the kink was going to go away, it would have done so in the first two or three days... it's been a week since she had the PET scan that shows the kink. The only option to fix it is surgery, and it would be surgery like she had three years ago when I first came out here. Back then even, the surgeon was hesitant to do surgery, and when he did, she had a lot of scar tissue, had to have emergency surgery that night for internal bleeding, and spent the next three months in hospitals. She said then that she didn't want to have surgery again. Even if she did decide she wanted surgery, we'd be hard pressed to find a surgeon to do surgery, and even if we found a surgeon that would do it, she's so bad off that she probably wouldn't make it through.

Mom has been trickling downhill over the last few months. She was spending most of her time lying down, either on the couch or her bed, resting. She was generally awake and with it, she'd confuse things sometimes, but things have been kinda calm. She's been losing weight, she's down to 103 pounds. Since the stints were put in her kidneys, her creatinine level had stayed around 2 or 3, but about two weeks ago, it jumped back up. Her urologist that put the stints in was rational and knew that waiting a week to get the PET scan results was the best plan. This has nothing to do with her kidneys, that's just a side effect of the obstruction.

Over the weekend, she spiraled down really fast. She's confused, has trouble talking sometimes, is nauseous constantly, in a lot of pain, and sleeping all the time. She has trouble with her balance, and she's really weak. We went to hydration on Monday, and the labs showed her kidneys were even worse off. We talked to hospice, and got some good information, but Mom isn't ready for hospice yet. They would give her more/better things for her pain and nausea, but they would also require that she stop receiving hydration, and hydration is basically what's keeping her alive. The nurses say that based on her condition, she'd only make it a few days without hydration.

So at the doctor appointment she had today, we had a good long pow-wow (her sister Anne had already planned to come out on Friday, and my sister Brooke came up yesterday). The current plan is the best of all worlds, considering the situation. Mom will be getting more hydration, it'll be almost daily, and we're going to work on arranging it so I can give her hydration at home on the weekends. The kink is making her dehydrated, even though she's getting as much fluid as she is. That dehydration is what's causing her kidney problems (if I understand right). So being hydrated more should help her feel better. The doctor has also given her different medications for pain and nausea, and they're in patch form, so we don't have to worry about them not getting absorbed from her digestive system. We also have liquid morphine in case of bursts of pain. So she's basically getting the comfort of hospice and the life extension that her stronger than steel will is fighting for. Best of both worlds.

The other thing the nurses have said, and the doctor has agreed, is that at some point, her body is going to trump her will. She'll have a heart attack, a stroke, a coma, something, and she'll be gone. They can't say when, because they don't know when. It could be tomorrow, next week, next month, or after her birthday, which is her first, or maybe ultimate, goal. So don't hesitate to call. She may not be up to talking, or talking for long, but it won't hurt to try. I try to keep all the phones with me, so if we're home, I'll probably be the one answering. If you call her cell, again, I'll probably be the one answering.

Please pray for her. If you go to church, please put her on the prayer list. Namely for comfort and peace.