The Next Step

As I said earlier, my mother was scheduled for brain surgery on Monday. Last Friday she had her pre-op chest X-ray and blood work. She called me Friday afternoon and informed me that the chest X-ray showed what they are referring to as a nodule. They scheduled her for a lung biopsy for this morning.

This involves a local anesthesea and removal of a piece of the lung through a needle. Then the tissue sample is tested for malignancy. The Radiological Interventionist asked her if she had recently had a CT scan on the lung area and when he heard she had not, he set her up for that first. A half an hour later the doctor came back out and said that the CT scan showed a calcified spot and not a nodule. He said in his opinion that the CT scan did no show anything suspicious. No biopsy was done and we were back at square one and still had a brain tumor to deal with.

So, back to the neurosurgeon we went and now it was no longer my parents and I(I have five brother and sisters). It was now my parents, myself, one of my brothers and one of my sisters. Imagine being a busy doctor and seeing all of us walking in your direction. The doctor proceeded to present my mother her options based on her latest developments. But the Radiological Interventionist recommended a PET Scan, which is a type of X-ray that identifies potential cancerous spots and my brother grabbed onto that suggestion with everything he has.

I feel so sorry for my mother, because there is a definite divide in what her children think her next step should be. My parents were presented with a lot of information in a very short amount of time and are somewhat overwhelmed. My brother seems dead set against surgery. But without, at the very least, a biopsy, we will never know if the tumor is benign or malignant. And to some people it may not matter, but without this information they will not plan a course of action and for some people that would also be okay. But I am not sure that is okay with her.

While at the consult with the neurosurgeon, a lot of questions were asked. My brother asked a lot of questions and some of the questions he asked several times over, almost to the point of frustration on the part of the surgeon. My mother also feeling the same way, exclaimed she was hungry and going to get some breakfast. My father is very quick to make decisions and immediately asked the surgeon when my mother could get back on the surgery scheduled. My mother very quickly said “not so quick.” She does not make her decisions as quickly.

Although I am relatively sure she will opt for surgery, she just wants to digest the new developments and think it through thoroughly. The surgeon said she would most likely be having it next week. My parents will be staying with me when the time comes, but I am torn between being there for all these appointments, if my brothers and sisters are present. It is the uncertainty at the current time that is driving me crazy. I was beginning to come to terms with the idea of cancer, but we don’t know with any certainty that is what she hasand it sounds like it will be several more days before we will know.

My Life Is About To Change

I have been pretty much playing around with this blog for the last year or so and throw an article on it once in a while and then ignore it for a while. It is about to go in another direction and if you keep reading you will learn more.

My son graduated from high school on 5/26. He was third in his class and has ben accepted in to the Ohio State School of Pharmacy. He gave a fantastic speech at his graduation and needless to say, I could not be more proud of him. Family came from everywhere to see him graduate and we all had a great time.

My mother told me about a week before the graduation that she thought she had a mild stroke. She said she was having a hard time grasping things with her right hand. My first response was “your speech does not seem to be affected.” Speech and a degree of paralysis or difficulty using limbs on one side of the body are normally the noticeable result of a stroke. She said she was scheduled for a cat scan on Thursday(5/28). I didn’t think a whole lot more about it at the time.

On Wednesday morning(5/27) she approached me and said I know what is wrong with me and I did not have a stroke. She had been feeling bad the previous Saturday evening and my dad took her to the emergency room. She was already scheduled for a cat scan, so the doctor decided that he would go ahead and do it now. They came back out with the results and informed my mother that they knew why she was feeling bad and that it was not good. The cat scan showed a 2 centimeter tumor on her brain.

My mother told me all this the day following graduation(she did not want t ruin the graduation for me) and asked if it would be possible to stay with me a few days(she lives about 80 miles away). She has opted to be treated at Grant Hospital which is about 5 miles from where I live. We went to see a neurosurgeon that day for further details. He explained her options to her and already had scheduled her for surgery on Monday, if that is the direction she chose to go.

They have already told us this is most likely cancer and that the source is at another place in her body. She was scheduled for a chest X-ray and pre-op testing for the next morning and my parents plans were to head home following all this and return Sunday not to go to the hospital Monday morning for the brain surgery.

What’s Up With this Swine Flu—Oops, I Mean the H1N1 Virus

What do you make of all this business of the swine flu? I watch these news stories with all these people walking around wearing masks and wonder what to make of the whole thing. I guess because my whole life I have been around people that have gotten and recovered from the flu, I find it hard to comprehend something that normally comes and goes as being as deadly as they are making this flu strain out to be.

It is difficult for me to be as scared as many people are being, but it can happen that millions of people could die from a resistant flu strain. When I was in college a wrote a paper about the flu pandemic that occurred in the early 1900’s and if you read what I read when I was researching this paper, you would be taking every possible precaution to guard against coming in contact with anyone.

The bad thing about these flu strains is a person is contagious before they have symptoms. So, you could be in contact today with someone that is fine and tomorrow they could have symptoms and you would have already been exposed. In the pandemic of the 1900s a person could have no symptoms and be dead in less than 48 hours.

Millions of people died back in the 1900’s and I believe if we were exposed to a strain that deadly today we would be in a lot of trouble. With international travel being what it is, this virus could literally become global with a matter of a few days.

I live within a few miles of a business that markets medical masks and surgical gloves and at the current time they are not being affected by the economy in the least. There sales have increased ten fold and they are working overtime to get their shipments out for delivery.

I think the current outbreak may be on its way out, but there is still a lot to be said for hand washing.

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