Cancer Sucks!

My week just has not been going well. You may remember, in August, I shared about a friend of mine being ill. So you don’t have to click back I will share that part of the post:

When my husband changed jobs last year he began working with a man who’s wife has multiple myeloma and for the last year I have been sending her cards and notes. Through our husbands I’ve tracked her progress through two stem-cell transplants. Finally, she was well enough that she gave me a call and we agreed to meet in the middle (Oshkosh) for lunch.

Three weeks ago, I drove an hour away to meet the lady who had been on my mind so much this past year. Upon meeting there was instant comfort, we had an ease of talking you don’t often find with someone. We spent several hours just sitting and talking, and I think I’m safe to say that we both left feeling mighty good inside. She is an absolute wonderful woman! We agreed to meet at least once more before Christmas and I decided to start calling her every week or two. In the mean time, I was scheduled to see the oncologist on Tuesday and she was scheduled to see hers on Wednesday so we set a time to talk after those appointments.

It’s pretty funny, because when we would talk on the phone, we always set up a time to talk in a few days. For awhile she had to see her oncologist every 3 days but she had worked up to going every 10 days and was so happy with that. She got permission to go on vacation and was really looking forward to going this September.

Then she told her oncologist that she had been having a little pain in her hip. He immediately scheduled an MRI and a tumor was found, a rather large tumor, 5-6 inches and it was decided she would start radiation and chemo, once again. I am still having a hard time grasping how she can go to meeting me over an hour’s drive away, to being hospitalized and time ticking, in just a few days.

I haven’t been able to talk to her for the last week, she’s just too weak, but our husbands talk every day or so and her prognosis isn’t good. The doctor’s were talking in weeks, now they are talking in possible months. So that’s a little bit of good news. But in amidst all of this, they have also found a tumor in the motor center of her brain, so for now, that is the tumor being attacked. She’s not strong enough for them to work on the hip tumor and the brain tumor so brain trumps hip.

Over the last couple of months we have talked many, many times and she has been in and out of the hospital several times, honestly spending more time in than out. She went through chemo a couple more times and she so wanted to be here for as long as possible.

I am heartbroken. She passed away Sunday, and my brain just does not want to function properly. I know my grief is nothing compared to her family’s. Her husband is so very lost without her; they were together nearly 40 years. Her son and daughter, in their twenties, should not have to be without their mom. Every time she spoke of her husband and children she called them, My 'J' or My 'S' or My 'T', she loved them so much.

One of my greatest fears was that I would not live long enough to meet my grandchildren. She did not have grandchildren yet. Her children are not yet married, she missed that too. It’s not fair and I want to scream and maybe hit a few things. But instead, this evening, I will going her funeral.

I know October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and she fought breast cancer and won in 1998. The breast cancer was not what took her and in no way related to the Multiple Myeloma. Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers. She will be missed by many.