Current mood:

thankful

Update On Mom
Mom saw the radiation oncologist yesterday, and came away from the visit in a much better state of mind. She was already determined to fight -- as she told the doctor, she doesn't like to fail, not even at something as simple as a card game (Lordy, how I know that! You know how sometimes a parent will let their young child win a game of checkers or something, to give them confidence? Not my Mom...when I won, it was because I was truly better than her!).

She really likes Dr. Moeller (I think that's the way it's spelled). He's English, with a wonderful accent. We knew going in that he was English, but it was a bit of a surprise when a black man walked into the exam room -- you think English, you tend to think white). The one bad thing is that it's not curable. The only way to cure lung cancer is to remove the lung where the cancer is, and they don't think she could handle the surgery and subsequent treatments -- being 76, diabetic, slight asthma, some blocked arteries...He did say that he was very confident that this was caught early enough to make containment and controlling it successful, and gave her a prognosis of 5 - 10 years of a full life post treatment. This was a relief to her because she doesn't want to die before George (he just turned 87). Of course, George could live a longer life...but...

She still has to see the chemo oncologist, and Dr. Freedman ( might be Freeman, I'm not sure yet) might decide that Mom can't handle both at the same time. If that's the case, then they'll do the chemo treatments first and then the radiation, but Dr. Moeller right now would prefer to do them both together. He's looking at 3 weeks of straight radiation, but said it could be anywhere from 3 - 6 weeks, with chemo once a week. Her appointment with Dr. Freedman is on Dec. 5th, and she's now got an appointment with another oncologist or a thyroid doctor (not sure which) on Nov 30th, and that's when they'll biopsy the thyroid to see if the suspected tumor there is benign or malignant. Dr. Moeller's exam still showed that there's no swelling around the throat, which is a good sign. And Mom hasn't been having any of the thyroid cancer symptoms, either. The only lung cancer symptom that she's had is a few weeks ago, she had a cough for a few days and brought up some red tinged mucous, and that's it -- which is another good sign.

Mom went to see her primary doctor, to see what was going on with the thyroid biopsy because Mom had thought that Dr. Lap was setting it up -- turned out that Dr. Lap thought the pulmonary doctor was going to set it up and he thought that Dr. Lap was going to set it up. In the end, it was Dr. Lap who set it up yesterday while Mom was in her office. When Mom was having the cough, she also had a regular visit with Dr. Lap, and Dr. Lap insisted on a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia -- Mom, of course, didn't want this, because she felt that in the past 12 months, she'd been exposed to too much radiation, but she went anyway, and that's now ended up being the test that saved her life. Unfortunately, Dr. Lap has now been thrown into the role of patient because her mammogram came back showing signs of a tumor. Hopefully, things will go well for her.

So, while we're approaching Thanksgiving with cancer present, there is a lot to be thankful for afterall. Mom's next appointment with the radiation oncologist is scheduled for right after her appointment with the chemo doctor -- a day or two later, I believe. And in that appointment, they'll do another CAT scan for the computer, so they can map out the radiation treatment and then treatment should start shortly after that -- we just won't know until Dec 5th if it will be both chemo and radiation or just the chemo, and we probably won't know until then what's going on with the thyroid -- but by that date, Mom will have a full picture of what's going on and will know just how to fight this. Dr. Moeller warned her that it wasn't going to be easy, that there would be some pretty low times and painful times. She told him that she's lived through burying her son, so she knows what it's like to go to Hell and back and has no doubts that she can face anything that happens as far as the side effects go.