Mom's 1st Anniversary

Wow, what a year. Mom, you were an amazing impact in my life, and I miss you every day. The three years I spent with you before you passed, I wouldn't trade for the world, even if I knew what this last year would be like. I'd do it a million times over. I love you, and I know you're happy where you are. I'll see you again someday. Until then, thank you for being my guardian angel, for sending me dragonflies, and for being in my life for 32 years. I'll never forget you. I love you Mom. *kisses and Mom hugs*

Mom's Interment

It's taken a little while, but Brooke and I have got plans set for Mom's interment. There will be a graveside ceremony on September 24th at 2pm in Iowa. Brooke and I will be flying in for the ceremony. It's going to be hard, but it's the last thing we need to do to get Mom resting, so hopefully it will provide closure for all of us.

Mom, I love you and miss you every day. There's times when I can hear your voice in my head, singing the songs you used to sing to us, and it warms my heart. I wish you hadn't been taken from us so soon, you were just too young, but I'm glad you're out of pain and at peace. I love you always.

Updates on Us

Well, Brooke is back in San Diego, settling back in with her husband in their house.

I made it to Florida on Saturday, and am working on settling into my new place with my roommate and really good friend John (Mom really liked him when she met him, and she's only really liked two guys I've brought home, so I know he's good people).

The house is being staged this week, and the Open House will be Saturday. If anyone is looking to move into a gardener's dream home, pop by and check the house out. =)

I think that's about it for now... I'll keep y'all updated on the house sale progress.

GOTTA SELL STUFF

Sorry for the Caps Lock, but this is a big deal. The furniture buyer flaked out, so we have a bunch of furniture that I don't want to see going to the dump. I've posted pics of pretty much everything on my Facebook account, so check it out, let me know if there's anything you're interested in (even things you don't see, we probably have it). Best way is to call the house. 925-462-9459.

Spread the word! =)

Nearing the end of all of this.

Today is the second day of the estate sale. Yesterday went pretty well, there's still some good items to sell today, including some big ticket items, but things are moving along. It's not as hard as Brooke and I thought it would be, maybe because we're so tired of going through everything.

I've decided to move back to Florida. I have some wonderful friends and family up here, and my aunt and uncle have been wonderful throughout this whole thing (we couldn't have done this without them), but I don't feel like this is where I belong. This is where I grew up, and I love Pleasanton, the Bay Area, and California, but this isn't home anymore.

Starting the end of this week or the beginning of next week, we'll be having the house touched up and staged, and the first (and hopefully only) open house will be the first weekend in March. While the house is being worked on, Brooke will be here at the house, and I'll be packing my stuff into a truck and moving it to a storage area in Florida (except for my furniture and essentials, which will be moved into my new home). If I'm needed back in California for anything, I'll fly back out here, but if I'm not, I'll be in Florida by the end of the month (I know, sooner than I expected too).

Some of you have met my friend John, he came out with me when I was moving my stuff back here from Florida, I'm pretty sure it was the middle of 2009 (_not_ the John that initially came out with me in the RV with his black lab Dudley). He lives in a two-bedroom place in Clearwater (in the Tampa area), and I'll be moving in with him, taking the second bedroom. He's a wonderful friend, has been support for me through all of this, and from what I've heard, all of you that have met him really like him, so I'll be in good, positive company, that will help keep me from falling into a funk again, which is something I really need. =)

We're all hoping for the house to sell relatively quickly, just so all of this can be over with and we can get on with our lives. I'll be kidnapping John and bringing him to Trinity with me at the end of May, and I'll be coming out probably every year to visit (I have some Christmas dishes I have to bring with me every year if I want my aunt's cooking... darn bribery *lol*), as well as other times of the year, but I'm looking forward to having my home again, not just a PO box and a place to store my stuff.

I'm keeping Mom's Facebook up, as well as mine, so if I don't update the blog as much (or at all), y'all can still keep in touch with us there. She's listed as Pat Mensing in Pleasanton, CA, and I'm listed as Olivia Mensing (in Pleasanton, CA, for now, then Clearwater, FL soon), so if I don't know you personally, just put a memo in the friend request that you followed the blog, and I'll be sure to add you.

God bless all of you for following along on this journey with us. It's been a hell of a 6+ years, and I know the next couple still won't be easy, but time will help heal the sharp pains, I hope.

We love you all, Mom, Brooke, and I.

Estate Sale

We set a date today for the estate sale. It will be February 11th & 12th, the second Friday and Saturday in February. We have a lot of work to do before the estate company comes in, but things are going faster than we thought they would.

Happy Birthday

Today is Mom's 60th birthday. She almost made it.

Service Slide Show

Thank you all that made it to Mom's service, we appreciated having you there. And those that weren't able to make it, don't worry about it, Mom knows you were there in spirit, and so do we.

I'm not sure what was going on with the slideshow when it was showing on the walls, it didn't glitch like that when we tested it, so here it is on YouTube.

I'll work on keeping up on this blog, letting you know what's going on with Brooke and I. Things are probably going to be a bit hectic over the next few months, with taking care of legal and financial stuff, as well as the house, but it'll just be a different kind of hectic. =)

Love y'all.

Obituary

Mom's obituary has been printed in the Tri-Valley Herald and the other papers in their news group. It has also been posted online: Pat's Obituary.

Memorial Service

Mom's memorial service is being held on Saturday, 12/11/10, at 11am PST. She's also having a simultaneous one held in Iowa at 11am CST

Mom wanted donations to go to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, and flowers are being provided by Bloomies on Main here in Pleasanton. Their number is 925-931-1290, and we're working with Sarah. Just let her know it's for the Mensing memorial, and she'll put together a beautiful coordinating arrangement.

Sorry folks, this is all the energy I have right now. I haven't slept much in the last couple months, and REALLY haven't slept much in the last couple weeks, so I'm running on average three to four hours a night... I'm an eight hour girl. I'm doing my best to just not get a cold. Love you all, love your support, we appreciate you more than you could know, and we look forward to seeing you next Saturday, even if it had to be under these circumstances.

Stories and Pictures

I'll elaborate on this post after I finish a few things that need to be done during business hours.

We're working on a slide show of pictures of Mom, and we're looking for your help. If you have digital pictures, email them to the celebrate_pat@yahoo.com email address, or if there's too many photos (absolutely nothing wrong with that, we'd love to have them), you can drop off a CD here at the house, I'll send you the address. If you have hard copy photos, and can't get them scanned, just drop them off here, and I'll scan them. I'll make sure they get returned to you in the same condition, I know just how precious hard copy photos can be.

Please make sure all hard copy photos are dropped off by Sunday, and all digital photos are in to me by Tuesday. This will give me time to go through them, edit, put them in a good order for the music they'll be going to. This meant a LOT LOT LOT to Mom, so it means a lot to Brooke and I. Please help us.

The second thing Mom REALLY wanted was stories. Memories you have of her, with her, etc. There may be an opportunity to say these at the service, there may not, we're not sure yet, but Brooke and I would love to have the memories of Mom for us, and to pass on to future generations. Again, please send those to the celebrate_pat@yahoo.com email.

Thank you.

Gone, but Never Forgotten

On Monday, November 29, 2010, at 9:08pm PST, Mom passed away.


She'd been having a hard time, and even though she was getting as much hydration as she was, she was dehydrated. She had just started on another 500mL of TPN to help counter balance that. Saturday morning at 5:30am, her ostomy bag was emptied (she started leaking the day before), and that was the last time she had output. We changed her bag that night, and I was concerned that there hadn't been anything out of the bag, so I called her doctor and one of her nurses from the infusion center to try and figure out what could be going on. They both said it sounded like a complete bowel obstruction.

I called the home health nurse, because I wanted someone to physically look at Mom, so the next morning (Sunday) the nurse came out. She confirmed that it was a complete obstruction, and said to just make Mom as comfortable as possible. All three of them, when asked how this would affect Mom's longevity of life, they all gave her a week or less. There is only one thing more heartbreaking than hearing that your mom only has about a week to live.

Monday morning, Mom's regular home health nurse came in, took labs, and checked Mom out for things like edema, bed sores, temp, BP, and pulse... the usual. Mom was in excruciating pain, probably from the obstruction. When she wasn't sleeping, she was throwing up. I'd change her bed linens, comforters and pillows (not just their cases) three times a night sometimes. Liquid morphine under her tongue was her only saving grace. The nurse took Mom off the TPN because all the nutrients were making her body work to process them, and that was putting too much of a strain on her system.

We made plans to get their hospice in, which was different than the other hospice organization we had been talking to. This one that does home health will use IVs in their hospice care, including a 24-hour morphine drip, so I just had to talk to the pharmacist Monday evening to figure out what dose of morphine to give her, based on what she'd been taking under her tongue. She'd also have a bolus for breakthrough pain, and she could have a piggyback of saline, just in case she needed a little bit of hydration. The nurse was scheduled to arrive 9am Tuesday morning.

I was sitting downstairs, talking to my cousin and listening to Mom on the baby monitor. Brooke got this brilliant idea that, since Mom tends to get a little wobbly sometimes when she walks, to get a baby monitor so she can just say our names and we'd hear her so we could help her do whatever it was she needed. This particular model has one baby unit (in Mom's room), and two parent units (we kept one in the family room and one upstairs in whatever bedroom we were sleeping in). Mom was sounding a bit congested in her breathing, like she'd been all night, and morphine slows you down to about 8 breaths per minute (try doing that... it's not easy), so things were status quo. Then her breathing sped up a bit... not fast for a normal person, but fast for her. By the time I got upstairs, she was quiet. I checked to see if she was breathing, tried waking her up, nothing worked. I was crying, screaming, shaking her with all my might, trying to get her to open her eyes, to no avail. My cousin came up, pulled me off of her, and told me that she's gone. THAT is the most heartbreaking thing a person can hear.

The fire department came, confirmed things medically. The police came, because they have to investigate every in-home death just to check for foul play, and later on, the crematorium came to pick her up. We went to bed around 4am. Is it creepy that I slept in Mom's bed, on her side?

So the memorial service in California will be on Saturday, 12/11/10 at 11am. It will be held at Trinity Lutheran Church, 1225 Hopyard Road, Pleasanton. And yes, we'd love for you to come, even if we don't know you, you care enough about Mom to keep up with her status.

I'll update this post with the info for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation that donations can be made to. I also have a Facebook page that I update (Olivia Mensing), I maintain Mom's Facebook page (Pat Mensing), and there's an event on Facebook for the memorial, not that an RSVP is needed. =)

TPN

Okay, my goal is to not keep y'all out of the loop as long as I have information and an answer... I didn't have an answer that last month-long hiatus, which is why I didn't post anything. No point in getting everyone's emotions all pulled around, hopes up, then dash them; it's enough that mine and Brooke's lives are being thrown upside down.

So, Mom started on TPN on Saturday. TPN stands for Total Parenteral Nutrition. It basically has all the nutrients a body needs to stay alive. Mom had TPN when she was in ICU right after surgery, so I became a little familiar with it, because of my love for knowledge and ability to retain a majority of it. At that point, she was about 230 pounds, so the TPN had the basic nutrients and vitamins. This time, with her being 103 pounds, they've added fat lipids into it, I imagine to help prevent her from losing more weight.

So right now, after a refresher course, I'm Mom's nurse and care taker, except for blood draws for labs, and changing the needle in her port. The nurses that have come in have mentioned a few things to keep an eye on, so we'll be doing that. At this point, her infusion takes 24 hours per dose. That can be bumped down slowly, to make sure her body is taking it okay, but at this point, I don't see her getting down to a time frame that we'll be able to take her back into the infusion center where she's spent the last six years. I'm hoping that can change, because we love the nurses, they love us, and they know Mom, so they can give an opinion on her specific needs and history, not just what they see at that point. Mom and I are both bummed about this, but we'll still be keeping in touch with them, and hopefully visiting when we can. =)

It's kinda weird. I hate inflicting pain on Mom. I can't take a splinter out of her finger when it requires a needle to get it. And now I have to stick her every day to check her glucose. But this is what's necessary, so I'm going to do it.

Mom isn't the same as most of you remember her.

She's lucid most of the time, but she tends to be forgetful. She'll ask the same question multiple times a day, for many days in a row. She rests or sleeps a lot, although she's not sleeping as much as she was a couple weeks ago, so all this hydration is good for her. But I would say she sleeps about 18-20 hours/day. Since the first surgery three years ago, she had trouble reading and spelling. The theory is that she had a mini-stroke while she was in the hospital at some point, but there's no evidence of that in scans/CTs/MRIs/etc. Since she had the stint procedure, her eyesight has been funky, so reading and typing is even more difficult.

When she's not lucid, anything goes. We get asked all sorts of weird questions, she sleeps a lot more, and we have to do a lot more for her. She's also a lot more stubborn (let's face it, we all know she's stubborn/determined/however you want to phrase it... lol), because she doesn't realize she's not lucid. It's an interesting position to be put in. But as y'all know, Mom is more than worth it.

Brooke (my sister, for anyone who doesn't know) was up for two weeks. She left this last weekend because she has to finish up this semester of school, get things straightened out in San Diego, and figure out what she can do with work. In about a month, she plans on taking a semester off from school, coming up here to help me out (thank God), and to spend time with Mom. My sister rawks!

I'm not much one to ask for help, in case y'all haven't figured that out yet. ;) But with Mom in this condition, I don't feel safe leaving her alone at all. We're using a baby monitor even, so when we're not in the same room, I can keep tabs on her. This makes getting out of the house basically impossible, and sometimes even doing things in the house quite difficult. So if anyone is available for the next month to help me out, it would be much appreciated.
- outside errands would be grocery store and pharmacy (that's what I can think of for now)
- inside errands would be vacuuming and dusting mainly (I HATE doing those)
- around the yard would be tending to the vegetable garden, watering potted plants (under covered areas), pulling weeds, dead heading and pruning roses/other plants (you MUST know what you're doing, Mom is VERY particular about her roses)
- bringing ready-to-heat/eat food for me (not quite as important, but would be nice)
- coming over just to hang out or keep an eye/ear out for Mom (I just do stuff and have the monitor nearby so I can hear her) so I can get a break and get out of the house... nighttime/overnight would be beyond awesome for this.

Please call the house if you're able to do any of this stuff, it's appreciated more than you may know. If you don't have the house phone number, please send an email to the celebrate_pat@yahoo.com email address, and I'll give it to you there... I don't want to post that kind of contact information online like this. Thank you again, and keep prayers for comfort and peace for Mom going please. God bless.

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.

Make The Best of It Quote

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Quote of the ...Today. (Hero Quote)

Without heroes, we are all plain people, and don't know how far we can go.

— Bernard Malamud

Stories

I've seen that Mom loves to relive fun times that she's had with her family and friends. I'd love it if you would send a story or memory (or multiple stories/memories) to celebrate_pat@yahoo.com for her. Whether it's a story about the first time you met her, a funny thing that happened, any and everything you want to say, she'll love them. They may also come in handy down the line for a project I've been talking about with Mom. Thank you. =)

Updated Count

The good news, Mom's procedure is continuing to show that it worked, her creatinine is half of what it was. That's still about 1.5 to 2 mg/dL higher than a "normal" person, but we all know Mom has never been normal. ;) Anyone that extraordinary could never be called just normal. We'll see the urologist on Friday and go from there, as it would be nice if there was a way to lower her creatinine to normal levels.

Now for the not so good news. Dealing with the last chemo drug not working AND the bad kidney function at the same time was too much for Mom, so she took a break from thinking about chemo. In that time, her count has gone up to about 1440. We'll see the oncologist on Friday, and I imagine a game plan will be worked out for the next step in fighting the cancer. Mom has said she's not ready to give up, so as long as she's got the fight in her, we'll all be around for her. There are other chemo options, they're just not as appealing as the previous ones have been. Shall keep y'all updated. Much love CR.

Surgery

Surgery went great. Things appear to be working as hoped, so for now, we're considering it a success. Mom is home and, aside from having nausea still sometimes, she's back to (relative) normal).

More News

Mom's creatinine level (a measure of kidney function) has been running a little high for a few months now, but its been kept in check. In the last couple weeks, its jumped to a rather high level, and it's been affecting Mom. It's made her more nauseous, and a couple other side effects I can't remember right now. If not treated, it can also lead to the need for dialysis, or kidney failure.

To remedy this, Mom will be going in (right now she's scheduled for Monday) to have a couple stints put in. The surgery shouldn't be a problem, it's just an outpatient procedure. I'll put an update on here as soon as I have one, please just keep her in your prayers, especially on Monday.