How did this happen?

Or as my friend Dona so eloquently put it, “HOLY SHIT!!! OMG that is insane.” On September 30th, mom was at work. On October 1st, she went into the hospital for some tests (they found a mass on her lung on a ct scan the week before). This hospital gives a full battery of tests all in one day with results and visits from different doctors. The second day you are supposed to come back for your biopsy. The first day they ran a bunch of tests that showed that mom is at Stage 4 lung cancer, the cancer is in her bones, her liver, her blood, and in the fluid around her brain (although we don’t know to what extent. They found multiple fissures in her spine, floating pieces of bone from the spine, pelvic stress fracture, neck stress fracture, etc., etc…) By the end of the day the oncologist came in and Dina asked straight up, if I was going to tell family to visit, when should they come. The oncologist said, “next week”. They kept her in the hospital for calcium in her blood, and by Friday, she could no longer walk. She can stand and pivot and take a few steps, but too weak and painful to do anything else.

How did she wind up going for a ct scan? Mom had clear lung x-ray and a sinus ct-scan about 6-7 months ago. Her lungs were clear, but her sinus’ had issues. Mom had sinus surgery a few months ago. She wasn’t healing from it, and had to keep going back and getting cleaned out. She was on percocet for a few weeks, which was masking all of her other aches and pains, and as a rheumatoid and osteo-arthritis sufferer, she was always in some sort of pain. She just attributed all of the pain to the sinus surgery and the arthritis. She did cough up blood though, so they decided to do another ct scan, which showed a 4 – 5 cm mass on her lungs.

The question on everyone’s mind is, where did it start? We all have our own different theories, the docs think it was the lungs, based on the type of cancer cells. We’re puzzled by the bone fractures, and are wondering if it didn’t start in the bones? Moot point….we are sort of getting over ‘where did it start’…at this point, it doesn’t really matter.

It’s been a very surreal experience for all of us. Dina was there at the hospital and giving us updates. Again, from being at work on a Tuesday, to not walking on Friday. Very, very surreal. And, she’s been home for one week, and her narcotics are now at 10 times the dosage she was on a week ago.

Hospice has been great, they come almost every day, we have home health care as well and social workers that visit. I have been fortunate enough to take leave, and plan on spending a lot of time here through November. Dina and I take turns and support each other in the evenings, and our sister Toni comes every day and spends time with mom. We're supporting one another and doing well.