Lord, I'm woefully behind on my blogging... has it really been three weeks? Well, some quick catching up is in order. I saw D. two weekends ago. When we got her wig she still had long hair, albeit, thinning out. Now she had only wisps and was wearing her head scarfs which she said she actually preferred from a comfort and maintenance standpoint. At the lake that weekend were also my brother, his son (there to set her up with a computer), my mom's brother and his wife and my mom's sister. R.'s son and his girlfriend were there from Macon and R.'s parents also stopped by right before I left.
I was worried all the company may have worn D. out but she took it all in stride and was happy to see everyone, thrilled with her new phone (with answering machine: a selfish gift on my part because I was so frustrated at not being able to let her know I'd called) and her mp3 player loaded with the theraputic music supplied by my sister-in-law as well as our new anthem "I believe the world should revolve around me" by Little Jackie. All in all, a good visit, although I never saw her eat a thing while I was there.
The dang lights went out while we were there and when they came back up, tried as I might, I couldn't get D. connected to the internet, so still no emails for or from her. Rumor has it my brother is headed back up there this weekend to get it all sorted out.
You know what? I'm sick of all these D.'s and R.'s ...I'm just going to start typing names....I'm not quite sure why I ever started it...perhaps a sense of protecting folk's privacy...but if you know my family and you're reading this, you know who I'm talking about..and if you don't, you probably don't care.
Debbie called me the following week to tell me she was having new PET scans on Friday. These would be reviewed and the following Tuesday her oncologist would let her know if the chemo was doing its job and shrinking or at least slowing down these bad boy tumors. She asked if there was anyway I could be with her at the doctor's office...Well, yeah....of course.
Mercifully I found a new way to get to Piedmont that didn't involve the hell that is I-75 so I actually arrived there before Debbie. When she got there she was dressed in springy colors and wearing her new, long, blonde, shaggy wig. Let's face it folks, it looks like a wig, but she looked cute in it...having said all that I could tell she wasn't feeling well.
She admitted she'd only slept about an hour an half and that she was having a great deal of pain in her chest when she took a breath. Ray was parking the car and she warned me that he was "messed up"...code word, he found some pills (xanax, whatever....) to take.
When Ray finally showed up he kept his sunglasses on so I couldn't see his eyes. We talked while Debbie was getting blood drawn, and having her weight and blood pressure taken, etc. Ray kept feigning taking "dirt" out of his eyes as an explanation for their redness. I told him it seemed Debbie was a little upset with him to which he responded she's always upset with him to which I asked why is that? "Because I'm breathing." Without stating the obvious (you can't take care of her when you're messed up on prescription drugs!) I told him we both knew why she was upset. 'nuff said.
Ray decided to go out to the lobby while Deb and I went in to get the news from Dr. Jonas. While we waited Debbie had even more discomfort and pain breathing and I convinced her to get on the table/bed and she was just situating herself on her stomach when Dr. Jonas walked in. Now if you've read previous posts, you know in the past, her oncologist has not gotten high marks in bedside manner. His first words to her upon meeting her were not, "Hello, I'm Dr. Jonas," but rather, "You have a 50/50 chance of living one year." To be honest, in this meeting he was probably the most engaged I've seen him, but to be equally honest it felt like he was just scanning the report as we were sitting there. He told us the results were mixed, but we left feeling like it was all fairly negative news. The first two chemo treatments didn't have much of an effect. The spots on the adrenal glands and liver had grown and there was, in fact, a new spot on the liver. The only good news, if you can call it that is that the growths on the lower right portion of one lung had diminished but the cancer was now in her neck as well. Debbie has RSD (the chronic pain disease in her neck) and I asked if the cancer was on the same side as the RSD injury. He didn't know and didn't seem all that interested in finding out.
He changed her drugs for the next infusion to something "better and more expensive" and gave her a prescription for folic acid and a shot of B12 both things she needs before taking the new drug. He also gave her a refill on her Percocet (painkiller) which by her face I could tell she really needed to take. As we were walking down the hall to the lobby Dr. Jonas said, "Come on Farrah," to which Debbie replied,"Don't call me that! She's not doing so well at the moment!"
Next post: Tears for fears
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