Journal RM6f9's Journal: Heavy sigh 2
Update, doing my best not to rant or whine, just the facts and a couple opinions.
She's had unilateral lymphoedema in her rt. leg for a couple months - started with a swollen foot, now it's reached her thigh, it changed her gait about 2 months ago, which brought pain to the knee (patello-femoral pain syndrome - long term meaning "knee ouch"), pain which has since worsened to the point that it's multiple percocet by day, morphine (still oral, yay for small favors) at night.
She recently had her bilateral j-stents replaced, her kidneys came back into normal range, then they gave her an IV-contrast CT scan - bring out the buckets, her system HATES that contrast. We got the preliminary results by phone yesterday: "irregularities" in her pelvis, liver and chest - all lymph nodes scanned are enlarged.
If it weren't for the knee, she'd be *feeling* okay - no gross symptoms yet.
She's been fighting this crap off and on (mostly on) for 6 and a half years.
Her oncologist has her on a trial of Faslodex (fulvestrant), hoping to see her OCA count come down and everything else shrink back to healthy.
If I can bring any good at all out of this it's the following:
Ladies, demand that your Dr. add the OCA-125 test to your blood tests at exam time - it's how we discovered her disease so early - men, do the same on behalf of the ladies you care about.
Cancer *can* be fought - make sure any health-care providers are on the same page as far as attitude, or change them until the ones you have are (we went through 3, all *very* intelligent clinicians/ all more interested in statistics than bedside manner).
Nobody guarantees us more than today. We joke about
"What would you do if an earth-killing meteor was detected, and you only had x minutes?"
"Probably try for one last bout of wild-monkey love - of course, my luck, the meteor would skip off the atmosphere, and I'd go to jail for lewd public behavior..."
Some of us, when we say "for better or for worse", truly mean it.
Tomorrow marks the 14th anniversary of our wedding.
I hope it is all going well (Score:1)
My mother-in-law was told she is now sick enough for dialysis - her kidney function is down to 13%.
She has basically refused - doesn't want the operation that you have to before you go on dialysis and doesn't want to be tied to a machine.
She understands her potassium levels will rise and will stop her heart.
A quick read of the numbers says 50:50 chance of a year.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. One brave lady, your mother-in-law. Good on her, I hope her quality of life rewards her for whatever time she has left.
We've had discussions around similar ideas, and they all come back to quality of life vs. quantity of life: The ironic thing is, the knee and leg pain she's fighting against are tertiary symptoms of her original cancer: the chemo she's been through along with the radiation did low-level long-term damage to her lymphatic system, which is evidencing as edema, which adds weight to the