Cancer Follow-Up



I know I've been dark for many weeks. Blogging will continue to be sporadic - long-time readers will remember that last year I posted about my mother's fight against cancer - at that time it was a cancer of "unknown origin." The doctors eventually concluded that the origin of the cancer was pancreatic. It only takes a little googling to discover that the survival stats for pancreatic cancer are quite grim. 3-6 months was a typical estimate.

As you might guess, the last 10 months have been quite hectic. At the time she was diagnosed, Mom was living in Marysville, Washington, about 50 miles north of Seattle. She was in her last year of teaching, and the age of 64, looking forward to retirement. The plan was to sell the house and move back to the Midwest to be near my brother and I, and our kids. In the end, with a lot of help from my brother and I, Mom was able to move back this summer. One side benefit of moving was better medical care -- since moving back Mom has been treated at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which is a national cancer research center.

Mom has been in and out of the hospital with various complications. In January it became evident that the chemotherapy was not working. Unfortunately there aren't any second-line chemo drugs for pancreatic cancer, so Mom entered a research study for an experimental treatment. Mom's complications continued, however, and there has been no evidence that the experimental treatment has had any effect. In the meantime, she has gotten weaker and weaker, to the point where she has a very hard time tolerating chemotherapy at all. The upshot is that, two weeks ago, the decision was made to discontinue active treatment, and for Mom to enter hospice care. Mom's oncologist was understandably reluctant to make any predictions about long she has left ("we're wrong 95 percent of the time when we give estimates") but when pushed he estimated 4-6 weeks, maybe 8 weeks at the outside. That was two weeks ago.

For the next few weeks for obvious reasons I'll be focusing on spending time with my Mom.

I may have something every now and then, but for the time being my blogging will continue to be highly sporadic. I appreciate your patience. In the meantime I'd be grateful if you could make some room in your thoughts and prayers for my Mom.

Posted: Wed - March 16, 2005 at 04:47 PM        

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