Not Shitty News!

So, I wanted to be sure to fill you on things since obviously there was a lot at stake today.

Good news. I napped.

I kid. But I am only able to kid because we were actually granted good news on the front of GiG. vs. Cancer.

The PET Scan today showed that the tumor in my mom's lung, as well as those in her adrenal glands, have shrunk. Also, there did not seem to be any spread. Good news, indeed. Good, good news.

The intensity of the day coupled with the severe sleep deprivation took its toll on me and there is currently a statewide search for what witnesses describe as a weeping zombie browsing the flat irons at Rite Aid.

For a minute, things looked ugly. My dad had to take my mom to the ER this morning due to severe pain she was experiencing overnight. Unsure how long she would need to stay at the hospital and with my dad having to go to work and my sisters otherwise tied up, there was a brief period of meltdown and panic as I packed up my bags and car and wondered how I was possibly going to stay awake for the drive to RI. Save a 40-minute snooze in the late morning, I had been up straight since 1:15am and by noon my hands were trembling. Fortunately my mom was released, though the cause of the the pain is still a mystery (foreshadowing?) and she is home and safe with smaller tumors inside her than she had before.

Because of the chaos of the ER visit, I don't know much more than this. I don't know how much shrinkage occurred. I don't even know how my mom was affected by the news as I only spoke to her briefly and she was out of it due to the medicine they gave her for the pain. "I skipped drinking," she slurred. "I went right to the drugs." (This, from a woman so resistant to taking medicine that we could not convince her to take even one Vicodin for her pain since her doctor gave her the prescription six months ago.)

But it appears she is responding to the treatment, words I've been waiting to write. Between having surgery taken off the table, the two hospitalizations, the lung inflammation caused from being over-radiated and the early spread of the cancer to her other adrenal gland (it started off just in her left and moved to the right), we had not yet had this moment. We had not yet received any good news.

Tonight, Dan asked me how it felt and while, of course, I am incredibly relieved that the cancer has not progressed, I'm working to allow this victory to penetrate. I am worried about her pain today. Also, they want to start chemo again on Friday. Apparently, the tumor in her lung appears to still be "active" so they want start the treatment immediately. The fact that her adrenal tumors shrank during radiation, which was directed solely at her lung, led her doctor to conclude that the small amount of Taxol (a chemo drug) she received weekly with the radiation (an amount intended only to enhance the radiation versus working systemically as regular chemo doses do) is the drug to which my mom is responding. They hadn't expected her adrenal tumors to shrink at all and the fact that they did (and, of course, that the lung tumor did as well) is apparently really encouraging to her oncologist who wants to act aggressively as a result.

I want to get behind this plan and I absolutely will if it's what my mom wants. It's just hard to see how much better she has felt lately, having had a month and a half off from any treatment, and then ready myself to watch her get weakened and sick again. This is a typical dilemma of chemo though nothing feels typical when it regards a person you love.

Still, my mom's tumors shrank. There is less cancer in her body than there was before. It's important that I allow the good news to have this night.

Then maybe I'll be able to get some sleep.

(Not leaving it to chance though. My word, it's nearly Ambien o'clock.)

(Like mother, like daughter.)