A long overdue update

Hello blog readers. It has been a long time. I've missed you! Just a few updates here.

My mom's health took a turn for the worse in February. I drove to Dallas in mid-February for a nice week-long getaway from everything and to catch up with all of my friends. I got to Dallas on Friday morning and on Friday evening, I received a call from my dad, telling me that my mom had possibly had a stroke and was in the emergency room. While my first instinct was to immediately turn around and go home, both my dad and mom thought it best that I stay in Dallas. I ended up cutting my trip by three days, but did stay for a few days after it seemed that things had stabilized with my mom's condition.

She was at her sister's house when she had the stroke and luckily, my aunt is a long-time RN, so she was able to care for her immediately. They had the emergency squad come and pick her up and take her to the local hospital (this all happened about two hours away from where we live). After she was stabilized at the local hospital, the decision was made to CareFlight her to her regular hospital, Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus, since she regularly goes there for her cancer treatments.

She was admitted at OSU very late Friday night. She ended up staying at OSU through the following Wednesday, when she was finally released after numerous tests and procedures. During all of this, she suffered from seizures, likely caused by the trauma to the brain by the stroke. They also diagnosed her as a diabetic during this stay at the hospital and determined that her cholesterol levels were astronomical (side note - I'm convinced that the diabetes and the cholesterol were directly influenced by her chemotherapy treatments).

By the time I got home, she was at home, doing good, albeit with a ton of new pills to take each day and a large number of new doctors.

She's now doing very well, eating much better, exercising daily and effectively controlling her blood sugar. She's seen the neurologist since that time and they've been slowly lowering her anti-seizure medication and that has also been working out well.

As far as her cancer goes, she saw her oncologist last week and he wants to hold off on resuming treatments for a while, while her body adjusts to all of these new medicines, if everything looks okay on the CT scan she is having this morning. She goes back to the oncologist next Monday to get the results from the scan and if things look stable, it'll likely be about two months before she gets back into the chemotherapy.

At her last oncologist appointment before all of this happened, they did mention that the spot on her liver was shrinking and that they were thinking they'd do four more chemo treatments and then, rather than a full-blown surgery, they would do a radio wave ablation, with is an out-patient procedure where they basically burn the damaged area of the liver away with a small instrument.

My grandmother's news has not been great either. In January, she met with my mom's oncologist and it was determined that her cancer has indeed returned, and there are no surgeries they can do to remove it. She goes back for another CT scan in early April and at that point, they will determine next steps. She may end up doing chemotherapy, but the doctor wants to be sure to not ruin her quality of life, so he needs to find a balance.

Also, I am still jobless, but that may be a blessing with all of the things going on with my mom. Due to her seizures, she is unable to drive for at least a year, so I have in essence become a taxi service, but I don't mind.

That is all for now - I will update when I know more.

- C