The C word
On December 12 my mom went to see an oncologist about what she thought would be surgery to have her gall bladder and a polyp on her uterus removed. She was reffered to Dr. D. by her regular physician because she’d had breast cancer in the winter of 1991 and this was a “just in case” measure. She was in surgery for over six hours. They had another surgeon remove her gall bladder, and then Dr. D. and his team took out her ovaries, uterus (which was much bigger than it should’ve been due to the benign polyp) and found was he said were “thousands” of tumors in her abdomen. She was diagnosed with primary peritoneal cancer, and the polyp on her uterus was caused due to taking the drug Nolvadex for ten years. She’s now getting chemotherapy with Paraplatin and Taxol from the doctor who did her chemo for the breast cancer, Dr. C.
That week she was in the hospital was the worst. I stayed with her the night after her surgery, and they had her hooked up to a nasogastric tube, catheter, two salineIVs (because they drained 10litres of fluid from her) and a BP machine which would take her blood pressure and wake her up every fifteen minutes for about two hours. The BP machine was gone two hours into it, then every now and then someone would come to check on her and she was waking up pretty much every hour or so, pushing the morphine button while I fed her ice chips. She was disoriented and I had to pretty much explain what had happened to her each time she woke up. It was, to put it lightly, hell.
But she got better. She started walking around, and then her bowels started working again, and a week later she went home. Our family had christmas at her house, with a hospital bed and everything in the living room. Everyone was kind of down, as is to be expected, but she said it was good to have everyone there.
The prognosis is better than was first given, at first Dr. D. said four months to a year, now we are waiting to see what the chemo will do, and there’s a 60-80% chance of success; that is it will either shrink the tumors and put her into remission, or at the very least slow their growth down. “How long she will live” will be revisited once this first round of chemo is done. It’s already starting to take its’ toll; she’d had diarrhea since thursday the 10th and it got so bad that finally the 17th she called me and work and asked if I’d bring her some immodium. She took that and now she’s feeling better. Her next treatment is on the 31st of January. My brother was in town from Michigan Tech and went to the first one, but since he is back in school I think I may end up helping her out this time.
In the hospital I was reading Thich Nhat Hahn’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching and thinking about death, and how the buddha taught that there is no death and no birth, that everything is a big cycle.
I don’t want to get into that right now, it is another posting.
