cancer is a b*tch

DH’s mom has decided to stop all of her cancer treatments.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer around 12 years ago, when DH was in his first year of college.  She did chemotherapy and went into remission for several years, but the cancer came back in her liver.  She has tumors in her liver, lesions on her lungs, tumors growing in her leg bones, and now, a very large one is growing around her chemo port in her chest.  She’s been in pain for a long time, and withstood every type of chemo available, went through every experimental drug her doctors could throw at her, but she’s just tired.  She applied for a new procedure that uses lasers to remove tumors from the liver, but was denied treatment.

She probably wouldn’t have made it through the surgery.  She’s now trying to grasp at some sort of “quality of life” by letting go and just living in the short time she has left.  The doctors have given her morphine (a patch, maybe?) that will hopefully allow her to manage some of the pain.  If her husband was still alive, I don’t think she would have ever given up on treatment – she’s a fighter.  But she misses George.

She’s told DH that she hopes to make it through the World Series.

Her mom, Nené to the grandkids, lives in Tampa, and is not well enough to travel alone so my sister-in-law is going to fly out there and travel with her by train all the way to New Mexico.  Dedé (DH’s grandfather) died in March 2007 and she hasn’t been the same since, getting weaker and weaker.

We’re going to drive out and try and be there while DH’s grandmother is there.  DH can’t stand to fly anymore.  One too many times getting shot at in an airplane, I suppose.  So, we’re going to drive the 28 hours out to Albuquerque.  We’ve done it before – after his dad died in August of 2007* and we drove his things back to Maryland.  Luckily, my older sister lives right at the half-way mark in Missouri.  14 hours almost exactly to her house.  We’ll probably drive one day, visit for one day, and wake up and keep driving, doing the same on the way back.

I’m so sad for my Hubby.  He was so close to his father and it has been incredibly hard on him since his death.  His mother depended on George so much, and now depends on her sons.  He calls her every week, sends her flowers on her anniversary and his father’s birthday, and even helped with the sale of her house even though he was so far away!  She has a very strong personality and they have definitely clashed over the years, but they are very close.  I think one of the hardest parts of this will be knowing that he and his brother are all that’s left of their family.

The death of a parent is inevitable, and in the back of your mind we’re all aware that at some point we’ll be burying our parents.  But to lose both in a two-year span, and at such an early age (DH just turned 30), is rather difficult.  And now, we know that our future children will not meet either of DH’s parents.

This is going to be rough.

*Wow, every time I think about how horrible that year was I am just so amazed that we made it through.  I spent the early part of it in ER’s with “ruptured cysts”, March was DH’s grandfather’s death, May was my first surgery and discovery that I had Stage IV endo, June we bought our first house, August DH’s dad died, September his brother got married.  I am starting to shudder just thinking about it all…