August 2, 2012

I cleaned my parents house.  My mum came home from another doctors appointment and she was extremely sick.  They put in a stent to relieve the pressure of the tumor around the pancreas.  I kept hoping that she would be ok, so far no jaundice, no nasuea, no vomitting or diahrea.  She had so few symptoms I could easily believe that we caught it early enough.  But she was suffering from pancreatitis at that point.  So, I sent her to bed and got the pain meds into her and she was out. 

The night before, Dad has called in Aunt Eva- mum's oldest sibling and only sister- to come out and stay with them.  He said she needed her security blanket and that Aunt Eva could help her more than he can.  Dad doesn't feel like he has been a good husband he thinks he has failed her in so many ways.  We had a long talk.  Dad loves my mother dearly and he is completely devastated by this and the waiting and the not knowing is keeping them both up at night and Dad can barely eat.  Mum is in serious pain so he is sleeping in the recliner in the living room so she can have the bed. 

He told me that when they first were married they had lived on my grandfather's farm.  One night he had come home from work and saw that their car was across from the trailer and parked in my Grandfather's garden.  So, he said he asked her how it had gotten there.  All she would say was "it's stuck".  But she had this smirk on her face that he said always meant there was far more to the story, but then the car on the garden already told him that.

He said "I can see that, but how did it get stuck over there". 
She wouldn't really tell him, only "it's stuck". 
"But HOW did it get stuck over there?" he asked. 
"Well, it was stuck in the driveway." 
"Yes, but NOW it is in the garden."
"I thought I would revv the engine a little and then rock it back and forth and get it unstuck.  But that didn't work.  So, I revved the engine some more and put it in reverse...but that didn't work.  So, I revved the engine some more, put it in reverse, got out and pushed...and it SHOT across the driveway into the garden and NOW IT'S STUCK!"

He and I cleaned the house as fast as we could while she slept.  Dad left to go to work and she woke up at some point not long before I had to leave and she comes down the hallway and just turns to look at me and she says "Holy shit" as she looks at me, then with no explaination and nothing else to say she turns and walks back down the hallway, I told her "Yeah, well you don't look so hot yourself!"  Apparently, she was just surprised that the house was clean and wasn't commenting on how I looked.

At the end of the day, still no news and still no hope.  Right now, she is just tired, sick, scared and sad.  But at least she has her family.  I left for work as soon as Dad got home from his job and then Aunt Eva and my brothers showed up to help celebrate a belated anniversary with her.  She did get an appointment for the next day and she asked me to go get a blood test called the CA19-9 which is supposed to be able to detect Pancreatic Cancer in your blood. 

The problem with certain cancers is they mask themselves as other things.  Pancreatic Cancer can even convince you it is just gas.  It did that to my mother.  Because of that, this cancer is often not found until it is too late.  It seems so funny, not even a week ago we were reading the article about how Sally Ride had passed away from Pancreatic Cancer and how it is so hard to find...and now, we are waiting to find out just how long this little mass has been hiding in my mother.