Staring 40 full on in the face has opened my eyes recently to a lot of things. Mostly how everything has become older, but still . . .
The most sobering news of the last month has been the discovery that my mother may have cancer. She (and to a lesser extent, we) have been dealing with this news since the beginning of November. They found a large mass on her liver, when she went in for a scan because she thought she had a bowel blockage. Needless to say, this information, along with the many possibilities that this thing could be, have sent my parents into a freefall of hypochondria and worst-case-scenarios.
While I certainly understand the "Hope for the best, Prepare for the worst" mentality that something like cancer can bring to a family, the fact that this is appearing now has shoved an important role into my face. I am going to be the caregiver for my parents.
Logically, I knew this day was coming. I just never expected it so soon. I also never expected my mother to get sicker than my father.
Now, as if this weren't stressful enough, there is the small matter of the apparent lack of information concerning this mass. They ran a biopsy on this thing a couple of weeks ago, and the results came back as inconclusive, which I honestly didn't know could happen from a biopsy. In fact, I was under the mistaken impression that a biopsy was the most definitive way of identifying the mass. They seem to be trying to identify this thing by process of elimination, which is time-consuming. And really, if this mass is as large as they say it is, and is quite possibly malignant, why then does it seem that the medical feet are dragging?
If this thing is cancer, we've known about it for over a month now, and treatment has yet to begin on it. This seems rather incongruous with "aggressive treatment"
Which brings us to another point. My mother has had blood work, scopes, scans and labs done numerous times in the last year, and this supposedly cancerous mass went undetected and got very large within the last 4 months?
There's a lot of stuff going on with this, and hopefully we'll have some concrete answers by tomorrow when she goes to the Mayo Clinic. Until then, this knot in my gut will just have to keep a little longer.
I sympathize with you on the caretaker role. When my dad went from being absent-minded to full-blown dementia in 2002, I found myself doing a lot more that I was prepared to do for him and his care. Thankfully, my mom was around to make the hard decisions and answer the questions I wasn't able to answer, but it was still overwhelming at times.
ReplyDeleteYou're a lot more of a "grown-up" than I was then, or even now. I'm confident that you can handle these things. Just try and be patient with the hospitals and doctors and such. They will give you the run around, and you will often feel like they don't care or they don't know what the fuck they're doing--and you may be right, but ultimately you are the one in charge. Keep a cool head, but don't be afraid to bare your teeth once in a while. They say you get more flies with honey than with vinegar, but they also say it is better to be feared than loved. Sometimes the right amount of crazy/angry is what it takes to get asses in gear.
Best of luck to you.
I'm so sorry to hear about your mom and all of that family stress.
ReplyDeleteWhen my aunt had cancer, I was confounded by a lot of things:
1. The lack of response from her horde of doctors
2. The 4 hour waiting time for scheduled appointments
3. Postponed surgeries that were supposed to save her life
I've learned a lot because of that experience (I was her Power of Attorney for Health, so I was one of her caretakers).
-I learned to ask Lisa B. for explanations when I didn't understand things.
-Record, as in Audio Record, every appointment for referral later. My occasional handwritten notes would later be hard for me to understand because I'd written too fast.
-Get the email addresses of the doctors and correspond via email so you have written record, again, and you can say "Answer this specific question" and they can't talk their way out of it as easily.
And, yeah, don't wait for them to call you. Call, email, demand answers. And shower them with cookies and candy. Be the honey and the vinegar.