Post by Honeylioness on Jan 7, 2009 12:01:57 GMT -5
Lunn
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 562
217764097 Lunn_Gor@hotmail.com LunnWindrider@yahoo.com
View Profile WWW Email Personal Message (Offline)
In rememberance
« on: January 06, 2009, 05:40:11 pm »
In early 1990 Patricia, age 53 went to a doctor for a bad case of belching. No matter what she ate, she would end up belching often and sometimes painfully without hours. After a few tests that were indeterminate, the doctor referred her to get an MRI. It too was inconclusive. The scan was set to take a slice of her abdomen at about ever centimeter or so. It missed the very small growth hiding deep inside the pancreas. Later, with the belching still unabated after trying a few medicines, she was again referred for an MRI. This time, they would be more thorough and take slices at every 5 millimeters, half the thickness of the previous scan and taking over twice the time. This time, the mass could not hide. Between it growing and the very thin slices of the scan, it showed up as a small, dark lump. Barely 25 mm long by about 10 mm thick, it looked innocent enough on the screen, but it was enough to refer to a specialist.
In May 1990, she and her husband went to the specialist. After reviewing the previous tests and her medical history, as well as talking with her, the doctor ordered an even closer scan. After yet a third MRI to very closely scan the mass, they all met again, this time, the doctor was very definite. “You have cancer, specifically, adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. Your surgery is scheduled in 26 days. After that, I have scheduled 5 weeks of intense radiation and 6 months of chemotherapy to follow that.” Both of them were in shock. They asked plainly about why the surgery was already scheduled. The specialist minced no words, “Because I did not want to wait to hear what your decision is, I wanted to get you the earliest possible date to start fighting this thing.” For those of you that don’t know, adenocarcinoma is in the top 10 cancers for killing people. Back then, the fatality rate was something like 95% in 2 years, 99% in 5 years and 99.99% in 10 years. The specialist went on “The surgery will take around 4 hours, leave you in the ICU for 12-15 days, on a ventilator for at least half of that…” He went on and on and they both were in shock. When they got home, they told me. I was in shock too.
The day came and I sat in the hospital through the surgery. It dragged on and on and I learned the first lesson of many, hospital chairs suck, take a cushion and a book. About 7 ½ hours later, the surgeon came to see us and told us that she made it in good shape, minus pancreas, gall bladder, a lot of lymph nodes, and some other things I don’t remember. It would be nearly 15 days until I could see her again. I made the choice to let my dad take the limited visiting time and I began to take care of things.
My family fell apart and I stood strong. It wasn’t a choice I made, it is just who I am and who I became. I began cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing, paying bills, everything. My dad was numb and I just took care of things. My mom came home and the work really began. I helped her to tend her bandages and with her after surgery care. Cleaning the wound, changing bandages, helping her to empty the drainage bottles and wrap to support all the muscle damage and the nearly 2 foot, bucket handle incision from her left side all the way up and over to her right side in the shape of a lopsided bucket handle. This was step two and just the beginning of my education.
After a month, the drainage tubes were out and the incision nearly healed. Now, we went to see the second stage specialist, the nuclear medicine physicist. After some measurements and discussing the results of the biopsy of the mass, he developed a treatment plan and laid out the designs of the shielding plates to be made for the treatment to come. Radiation is a brutal thing. It is a killer, no ifs ands or butts. We discovered that it kills cancer by a nuclear researcher in the early 1900’s having a skin cancer fall off after handling things like uranium and such. In the beginning, a lot of people were burned and killed by doctors taking lumps of radioactive material from huge led buckets and placing it on the body near where the cancer is. The Nazi’s did more research and as technology advanced, so has our understanding of using radiation for cancer treatment. Now, we use amazingly complex machines with laser precision targeting and computer controlled dosing to do the very best to hit the target from multiple directions. The goal of all of this is use less than lethal and burning levels of radiation aimed in multiple directions to all pass through the area targeted so that the lethal dose is only delt to the target from the build up of, in this case, three different beams of radiation shot into the body.
Everyone knows that radiation treatment causes nausea and loss of hair, we went through that and I developed the habit of carrying “Mr. Bucket” with a plastic bag in it, and a spare, with us, everywhere. And I mean everywhere, home, church, mall, Drs office, kitchen, bathroom, yard, everywhere. What a lot of people may not realize is that the treatment saps your strength, causes pain, gives you a nasty sun burn at the target sites and in general makes you miserable. It is in this time that I learned the truth of just how strong she was. When she could barely move, she would almost crawl out of bed, trembling, do her best to stand with my help, take tentative steps toward the bathroom and would get very mad when I had to catch her and in general carry her to the bathroom. Her final embarrassment was to have me wipe her because she lacked the strength to do it herself. It would not be the last time.
During the radiation treatment, I met many people, every one of them fighters beyond belief. Warriors in their own way far better and stronger than most people will ever be. One man in particular was in the middle of 6 weeks of radiation for throat cancer. He basically had permanent sunburn in his throat and after loosing nearly 60 pounds because he could not eat, he decided to end the radiation treatment. My mom was at the beginning of her weight loss. We managed to finish the radiation treatment doing ok and she recovered from her surgery well. In the mean time, she lost most of her hair and bought a nice wig. She finally got to be a redhead. I learned a lot by getting up every day, helping her get ready and going to treatment in the morning, then doing the rest of the things life demanded in what was left of the day. Then came chemo and about the same things happened, just spread out on the time scale to treatment once a week and about 2 days later she recovered a good bit and then delt with the rest of the week.
It is amazing what we do to people to try and cure them. It is even more amazing that people survive it and manage to recover. At the end of chemotherapy, she went again for an MRI. It was not good news. After the end of 7 months of treatment, the cancer had spread and there was nothing left to do now, we had pretty much tried it all. At least all we knew. Now, it was just a matter of time and waiting. I learned this is the hardest of all, knowing what is wrong, and knowing there is nothing you can do about it.
So, we waited, and got on with life. I still took care of things, tended to my family and in general all of my life revolved around caring for this strong willed woman fighting to live as best she could. In the spring of 1992, we got a call from the doctor, there might be something to try, IF you fit the profile, IF they would take you and IF you could get there. So, we were off to Omaha, Nebraska for an evaluation and possible bone marrow donation. After a load of testing, it was determined that she was compatible for the research study and was accepted for the project. That afternoon, she donated bone marrow. The study was a radioactively tagged antibody study to determine if you could use anticancer antibodies to take the poisonous radiation, in a relatively small dose, directly to the site of each cancer cell and kill it. This was ground breaking, cutting edge research and we were happy to try it. So, we moved to Omaha and lived in their hospital apartments.
She entered the hospital and without much fanfare, get a double IV bottle of stuff filled with the antibodies and radiation. Immediately, she was radioactive and in short order, all of her bone marrow was destroyed. For a week, she was in a isolation room with radiation shielding and I had to wear a monitor and suit to visit her. Then the bleeding began. One of the major things your bone marrow makes is platelets. If you don’t have them, you end up bleeding from your blood vessels and so on. So, the transfusions of blood and infusions of platelets began to keep her alive through the treatment. At one time, she was using something like 20% of all the A- blood available in the US for a couple days. Thank you to those that donate blood, it really does save lives every day.
This went on, off and on for 3 weeks, then a respite, and then another 2 weeks of hospital stay due to infection. And her getting her bone marrow replaced from her earlier donation. They used an antibiotic that is so powerful that they only use it IV, only if you are in the hospital for at least a week and only if you can take the full course. It is one of the last antibiotics ever developed, there are no more of them being invented that I know of. If they use this on you, it really is your last hope and it works well. The people in Omaha were great and worked hard at the cutting edge of medicine. I really think that this is the future of medicine for some and I am glad that we were able to help gain some knowledge for humanity. In the end, the cancer survived.
We went home in late October. All along, I had said what I wanted, we had settled some things and in general, there was nothing left to do but wait. We did some of the thing she never got to do. Among them, with the onslaught of Christmas, she got to sit in Santa’s lap in a store. We ate a lot of different food and drink. And we got in touch with everyone and updated contact information for everyone. Then came Christmas and she got to see her grandson, barely over a year old, enjoy Christmas at home. I cooked the standard large family meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The day after Christmas, she started to die in earnest. The 2 year 8 month battle had worn her out and she was done. She had come to peace with her religion and her fate. The drugs now were simply to control the nausea and the pain. I again moved in to help her get to and from the bathroom, fed her when she was too weak to lift a spoon or fork and was there to watch her fade away.
I watched her go, over the near 3 years, from about 200 pounds to barely 85. Loose her hair, her strength and finally, her smile. The last was the worst. In the last days, all she did was grimace in pain and wince and try to keep her spirits up. On the fair weather day, 15 years ago today, she awoke in the morning to a bathroom trip and her meds. Something was not right and I fed her slowly and had to keep reminding her to chew and swallow. I am not sure she even knew who I was by then. At 12:30 PM EST she was having too much trouble breathing for me to let it pass. I called my dad and told him I was calling for an ambulance and then hung up and called the ambulance.
Where I live, the county is barely 15 miles wide, my dad lives on top of a mountain with a mountain on the other side and on clear days, you can hear the trains on the tracks that cut down through the middle of the valley between the mountains. And on this day, you could hear the siren of the ambulance from where it left the garage all the way to my house. I do not think that I have heard a more mournful sound in all my life and I seriously hope never too again. The quiet day and the cutting, shrill cry of the siren as it moves about along the roads, getting closer and you knowing that it is destined for your driveway. She was taken to the hospital and I drove a little while later after making a few more calls.
At the hospital, I was joined by my family, friends, her church members and even some people from my dad’s work. She was made comfortable because she had a DNR order, the one I helped her decide to get after researching the disease. Sometime late in the afternoon, she lost consciousness and at 6:40 PM on January 6, 1993, she was pronounced dead of adenocarcinoma of the pancreas that had metastasized to the lungs and liver.
Two years and 9 months or so from diagnosis, one of the strongest, proudest and most Gorean women I have ever known died. I cared for her all that time with the exception of 10 days off where friends or family took over the watch, I was on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In that time, I learned more about myself, people and life in general than I think I ever will again. I thought I was strong, I learned I was not, but I saw real strength. I thought I was brave, I am not, but I was touched by real bravery. And I thought I knew life, but until I touched death personally, I had no idea.
My mom was a Southern Lady with a Master’s Degree in Education, a BA in Laboratory Science and a life that seemed fraught with difficulty. She lived in an orphanage to avoid her alcoholic, abusive step father. She lost one half-brother to suicide and another to an auto accident. She raised 3 kids being a stay at home mom because she felt it was more important than working to earn a little money and run the rat race. She worked with Ross Allen who pioneered snake bite antivenom and treatment methods. She fought the city council of Jacksonville, Florida to get changes to the contract for them to buy the utility that served our local community. She wrote politicians and school systems, she fought and taught teachers and schools, became a substitute teacher and touched many lives and through it all, held a quiet strength. She delt with 3 strong willed, smart, tough and self reliant kids, always pushing us harder, to do more and never accept “just getting by”. She woke early in the morning, got us kids going, and all the other things life demanded. She learned to care for sheep when we raised them on our farm, helped cut firewood, bottle fed lambs that were rejected from their moms, cared for puppies we rescued from the trash dumpster and through it all, had a quiet strength and dignity knowing she was a mom.
The worst thing I ever did to hurt her was when I was a punk teenager I told her that I didn’t respect her. I am so sorry mom, I made you cry and you didn’t deserve it. I hope you saw me graduate college and I hope you were proud. I know a lot of the things I have done since you left would not make you proud. I know I stumble and fail a lot and I sure wish you were here to help me with my daughter. You would have loved her, even if she is a hard headed mess of a brat. I love you mom and miss you more than words can say. I hope I can make you proud again some day. I am trying.
To those that have read this far, now you know one of the strongest people you will never meet and what she went through. I also went through it as well and learned to be stronger than I hope any of you ever have to be. I would not wish this on anyone. Don’t smoke, it killed her. You may have to die from something, but with cancer, you just fade away. Your disease destroys your family, your finances and your body so you end up trapped in a shell of what you were with no escape but death. I didn’t write this to change anyone’s mind or seek sympathy, only to cleanse my troubled soul a little and to put to words the pain and anguish and maybe give voice to some of my tears. If it helps you, then good, if not, I am sorry you wasted your time.
David/Lunn
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 562
217764097 Lunn_Gor@hotmail.com LunnWindrider@yahoo.com
View Profile WWW Email Personal Message (Offline)
In rememberance
« on: January 06, 2009, 05:40:11 pm »
In early 1990 Patricia, age 53 went to a doctor for a bad case of belching. No matter what she ate, she would end up belching often and sometimes painfully without hours. After a few tests that were indeterminate, the doctor referred her to get an MRI. It too was inconclusive. The scan was set to take a slice of her abdomen at about ever centimeter or so. It missed the very small growth hiding deep inside the pancreas. Later, with the belching still unabated after trying a few medicines, she was again referred for an MRI. This time, they would be more thorough and take slices at every 5 millimeters, half the thickness of the previous scan and taking over twice the time. This time, the mass could not hide. Between it growing and the very thin slices of the scan, it showed up as a small, dark lump. Barely 25 mm long by about 10 mm thick, it looked innocent enough on the screen, but it was enough to refer to a specialist.
In May 1990, she and her husband went to the specialist. After reviewing the previous tests and her medical history, as well as talking with her, the doctor ordered an even closer scan. After yet a third MRI to very closely scan the mass, they all met again, this time, the doctor was very definite. “You have cancer, specifically, adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. Your surgery is scheduled in 26 days. After that, I have scheduled 5 weeks of intense radiation and 6 months of chemotherapy to follow that.” Both of them were in shock. They asked plainly about why the surgery was already scheduled. The specialist minced no words, “Because I did not want to wait to hear what your decision is, I wanted to get you the earliest possible date to start fighting this thing.” For those of you that don’t know, adenocarcinoma is in the top 10 cancers for killing people. Back then, the fatality rate was something like 95% in 2 years, 99% in 5 years and 99.99% in 10 years. The specialist went on “The surgery will take around 4 hours, leave you in the ICU for 12-15 days, on a ventilator for at least half of that…” He went on and on and they both were in shock. When they got home, they told me. I was in shock too.
The day came and I sat in the hospital through the surgery. It dragged on and on and I learned the first lesson of many, hospital chairs suck, take a cushion and a book. About 7 ½ hours later, the surgeon came to see us and told us that she made it in good shape, minus pancreas, gall bladder, a lot of lymph nodes, and some other things I don’t remember. It would be nearly 15 days until I could see her again. I made the choice to let my dad take the limited visiting time and I began to take care of things.
My family fell apart and I stood strong. It wasn’t a choice I made, it is just who I am and who I became. I began cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing, paying bills, everything. My dad was numb and I just took care of things. My mom came home and the work really began. I helped her to tend her bandages and with her after surgery care. Cleaning the wound, changing bandages, helping her to empty the drainage bottles and wrap to support all the muscle damage and the nearly 2 foot, bucket handle incision from her left side all the way up and over to her right side in the shape of a lopsided bucket handle. This was step two and just the beginning of my education.
After a month, the drainage tubes were out and the incision nearly healed. Now, we went to see the second stage specialist, the nuclear medicine physicist. After some measurements and discussing the results of the biopsy of the mass, he developed a treatment plan and laid out the designs of the shielding plates to be made for the treatment to come. Radiation is a brutal thing. It is a killer, no ifs ands or butts. We discovered that it kills cancer by a nuclear researcher in the early 1900’s having a skin cancer fall off after handling things like uranium and such. In the beginning, a lot of people were burned and killed by doctors taking lumps of radioactive material from huge led buckets and placing it on the body near where the cancer is. The Nazi’s did more research and as technology advanced, so has our understanding of using radiation for cancer treatment. Now, we use amazingly complex machines with laser precision targeting and computer controlled dosing to do the very best to hit the target from multiple directions. The goal of all of this is use less than lethal and burning levels of radiation aimed in multiple directions to all pass through the area targeted so that the lethal dose is only delt to the target from the build up of, in this case, three different beams of radiation shot into the body.
Everyone knows that radiation treatment causes nausea and loss of hair, we went through that and I developed the habit of carrying “Mr. Bucket” with a plastic bag in it, and a spare, with us, everywhere. And I mean everywhere, home, church, mall, Drs office, kitchen, bathroom, yard, everywhere. What a lot of people may not realize is that the treatment saps your strength, causes pain, gives you a nasty sun burn at the target sites and in general makes you miserable. It is in this time that I learned the truth of just how strong she was. When she could barely move, she would almost crawl out of bed, trembling, do her best to stand with my help, take tentative steps toward the bathroom and would get very mad when I had to catch her and in general carry her to the bathroom. Her final embarrassment was to have me wipe her because she lacked the strength to do it herself. It would not be the last time.
During the radiation treatment, I met many people, every one of them fighters beyond belief. Warriors in their own way far better and stronger than most people will ever be. One man in particular was in the middle of 6 weeks of radiation for throat cancer. He basically had permanent sunburn in his throat and after loosing nearly 60 pounds because he could not eat, he decided to end the radiation treatment. My mom was at the beginning of her weight loss. We managed to finish the radiation treatment doing ok and she recovered from her surgery well. In the mean time, she lost most of her hair and bought a nice wig. She finally got to be a redhead. I learned a lot by getting up every day, helping her get ready and going to treatment in the morning, then doing the rest of the things life demanded in what was left of the day. Then came chemo and about the same things happened, just spread out on the time scale to treatment once a week and about 2 days later she recovered a good bit and then delt with the rest of the week.
It is amazing what we do to people to try and cure them. It is even more amazing that people survive it and manage to recover. At the end of chemotherapy, she went again for an MRI. It was not good news. After the end of 7 months of treatment, the cancer had spread and there was nothing left to do now, we had pretty much tried it all. At least all we knew. Now, it was just a matter of time and waiting. I learned this is the hardest of all, knowing what is wrong, and knowing there is nothing you can do about it.
So, we waited, and got on with life. I still took care of things, tended to my family and in general all of my life revolved around caring for this strong willed woman fighting to live as best she could. In the spring of 1992, we got a call from the doctor, there might be something to try, IF you fit the profile, IF they would take you and IF you could get there. So, we were off to Omaha, Nebraska for an evaluation and possible bone marrow donation. After a load of testing, it was determined that she was compatible for the research study and was accepted for the project. That afternoon, she donated bone marrow. The study was a radioactively tagged antibody study to determine if you could use anticancer antibodies to take the poisonous radiation, in a relatively small dose, directly to the site of each cancer cell and kill it. This was ground breaking, cutting edge research and we were happy to try it. So, we moved to Omaha and lived in their hospital apartments.
She entered the hospital and without much fanfare, get a double IV bottle of stuff filled with the antibodies and radiation. Immediately, she was radioactive and in short order, all of her bone marrow was destroyed. For a week, she was in a isolation room with radiation shielding and I had to wear a monitor and suit to visit her. Then the bleeding began. One of the major things your bone marrow makes is platelets. If you don’t have them, you end up bleeding from your blood vessels and so on. So, the transfusions of blood and infusions of platelets began to keep her alive through the treatment. At one time, she was using something like 20% of all the A- blood available in the US for a couple days. Thank you to those that donate blood, it really does save lives every day.
This went on, off and on for 3 weeks, then a respite, and then another 2 weeks of hospital stay due to infection. And her getting her bone marrow replaced from her earlier donation. They used an antibiotic that is so powerful that they only use it IV, only if you are in the hospital for at least a week and only if you can take the full course. It is one of the last antibiotics ever developed, there are no more of them being invented that I know of. If they use this on you, it really is your last hope and it works well. The people in Omaha were great and worked hard at the cutting edge of medicine. I really think that this is the future of medicine for some and I am glad that we were able to help gain some knowledge for humanity. In the end, the cancer survived.
We went home in late October. All along, I had said what I wanted, we had settled some things and in general, there was nothing left to do but wait. We did some of the thing she never got to do. Among them, with the onslaught of Christmas, she got to sit in Santa’s lap in a store. We ate a lot of different food and drink. And we got in touch with everyone and updated contact information for everyone. Then came Christmas and she got to see her grandson, barely over a year old, enjoy Christmas at home. I cooked the standard large family meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The day after Christmas, she started to die in earnest. The 2 year 8 month battle had worn her out and she was done. She had come to peace with her religion and her fate. The drugs now were simply to control the nausea and the pain. I again moved in to help her get to and from the bathroom, fed her when she was too weak to lift a spoon or fork and was there to watch her fade away.
I watched her go, over the near 3 years, from about 200 pounds to barely 85. Loose her hair, her strength and finally, her smile. The last was the worst. In the last days, all she did was grimace in pain and wince and try to keep her spirits up. On the fair weather day, 15 years ago today, she awoke in the morning to a bathroom trip and her meds. Something was not right and I fed her slowly and had to keep reminding her to chew and swallow. I am not sure she even knew who I was by then. At 12:30 PM EST she was having too much trouble breathing for me to let it pass. I called my dad and told him I was calling for an ambulance and then hung up and called the ambulance.
Where I live, the county is barely 15 miles wide, my dad lives on top of a mountain with a mountain on the other side and on clear days, you can hear the trains on the tracks that cut down through the middle of the valley between the mountains. And on this day, you could hear the siren of the ambulance from where it left the garage all the way to my house. I do not think that I have heard a more mournful sound in all my life and I seriously hope never too again. The quiet day and the cutting, shrill cry of the siren as it moves about along the roads, getting closer and you knowing that it is destined for your driveway. She was taken to the hospital and I drove a little while later after making a few more calls.
At the hospital, I was joined by my family, friends, her church members and even some people from my dad’s work. She was made comfortable because she had a DNR order, the one I helped her decide to get after researching the disease. Sometime late in the afternoon, she lost consciousness and at 6:40 PM on January 6, 1993, she was pronounced dead of adenocarcinoma of the pancreas that had metastasized to the lungs and liver.
Two years and 9 months or so from diagnosis, one of the strongest, proudest and most Gorean women I have ever known died. I cared for her all that time with the exception of 10 days off where friends or family took over the watch, I was on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In that time, I learned more about myself, people and life in general than I think I ever will again. I thought I was strong, I learned I was not, but I saw real strength. I thought I was brave, I am not, but I was touched by real bravery. And I thought I knew life, but until I touched death personally, I had no idea.
My mom was a Southern Lady with a Master’s Degree in Education, a BA in Laboratory Science and a life that seemed fraught with difficulty. She lived in an orphanage to avoid her alcoholic, abusive step father. She lost one half-brother to suicide and another to an auto accident. She raised 3 kids being a stay at home mom because she felt it was more important than working to earn a little money and run the rat race. She worked with Ross Allen who pioneered snake bite antivenom and treatment methods. She fought the city council of Jacksonville, Florida to get changes to the contract for them to buy the utility that served our local community. She wrote politicians and school systems, she fought and taught teachers and schools, became a substitute teacher and touched many lives and through it all, held a quiet strength. She delt with 3 strong willed, smart, tough and self reliant kids, always pushing us harder, to do more and never accept “just getting by”. She woke early in the morning, got us kids going, and all the other things life demanded. She learned to care for sheep when we raised them on our farm, helped cut firewood, bottle fed lambs that were rejected from their moms, cared for puppies we rescued from the trash dumpster and through it all, had a quiet strength and dignity knowing she was a mom.
The worst thing I ever did to hurt her was when I was a punk teenager I told her that I didn’t respect her. I am so sorry mom, I made you cry and you didn’t deserve it. I hope you saw me graduate college and I hope you were proud. I know a lot of the things I have done since you left would not make you proud. I know I stumble and fail a lot and I sure wish you were here to help me with my daughter. You would have loved her, even if she is a hard headed mess of a brat. I love you mom and miss you more than words can say. I hope I can make you proud again some day. I am trying.
To those that have read this far, now you know one of the strongest people you will never meet and what she went through. I also went through it as well and learned to be stronger than I hope any of you ever have to be. I would not wish this on anyone. Don’t smoke, it killed her. You may have to die from something, but with cancer, you just fade away. Your disease destroys your family, your finances and your body so you end up trapped in a shell of what you were with no escape but death. I didn’t write this to change anyone’s mind or seek sympathy, only to cleanse my troubled soul a little and to put to words the pain and anguish and maybe give voice to some of my tears. If it helps you, then good, if not, I am sorry you wasted your time.
David/Lunn