Life, the universe, and lunch

Cancer

So dad's cancer has made a comeback...

It was first spotted in his bloodwork at the end of last year, but the chest x-ray (or cat scan or whatever it was they gave him) didn't reveal enough and they scheduled another scan in early March. That one revealed two spots on his lungs that are too small to operate on (which we assumed were lung cancer but have since found out is actually colon cancer that has spread) so he was prescribed 14 days worth of some new chemotherapy pills. They gave him a number to call at the hospital if any specific complications related to his diabetes arose, but when he had similar symptoms but not exactly the same he refused to call. Mom stressed out huge from that and was debating whether to call the number herself; we talked about it on day twelve and I convinced her that she should. On the morning of day thirteen she called and they said that dad should stop taking the pills immediately... he was beet red, had lost a lot of weight and the soles of his feet were so tender he could barely walk. The doctor saw them that afternoon and they learned that most people don't even make it to day ten, so hopefully those pills have done the trick.

That was two weeks ago thursday, in a follow up visit last week they found his weight had dropped too much and started him on an IV at home. Yesterday his blood sugar was over 20 and he had other complications so they called again and were told to come back to the hospital. They tried to get a hold of me for a lift but I was in an area with spotty cell coverage and didn't get the message until 11:00 last night. I phoned mom right back but couldn't get a hold of her, it turns out that she was still at the hospital; dad didn't transfer from acute care to a regular bed until sometime after midnight. I dropped mom off at the hospital again this morning. Dad was awake and alert but had been vomiting so they wouldn't let him eat his breakfast. He may be back home tonight but I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime I'm sitting here at the office hiding out. I haven't seen Tammy since Tuesday night. That day a girl from work dropped by the office with her new baby daughter and it just depressed the hell out of me. I had Tam home for a visit that night and after getting back from tucking her in at the home I just couldn't get to sleep. Not that insomnia is new to me, but that night I literally never got to sleep. Made several attempts interspersed with some great educational stuff on the discovery channel, then finally gave up trying at 4:30 a.m. and got ready for work. Made it into the office at 7:00 a.m., had an appointment with Tam and the speech pathologist at 10:00 (that was fun, trying to figure out speech aids with Tammy blind with no glasses [a story that'll be in the easter post I'm working to backfill]), worked until 6:00, did a community meeting with the city about a park rebuild going on in my neighbourhood, and then went jogging to see the park property (and through the Kaufman woods in the dark; stupid!) and finally went to bed at 11:00 p.m. Slept like the dead! Which was nice for a change.

Thursday night I was going to have Tam over to Yas and Anne's for a visit, but they postponed until friday because Annie had something going on. That turned out to be good because I had tickets to Blue Man Group with a friend that I thought were for the 29th but were actually for that night. Teeheehee... oops! Just as in Vegas, the Blue Men rocked! I even got an 'autograph' of sorts in the form of a blue greasepaint thumbprint in my program. Got to bed late that night and was pretty wiped out friday, a common theme because Yas and Anne texted that they weren't up for a visit with Tam that night either. We rescheduled for tonight, presumably for on the way back from having Tam at home with me, but I just don't know if I'm up to it anymore. But how the hell do I explain all this to Tam if I don't end up seeing her today?

Fucking sigh.

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posted by ...K @ 12:38 PM