Crab-bitten and smothered
In the beginning of May of this year, my brother was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma in his stomach. Scans showed a tumor near his small intestine, small enough that it still be in early in its development. I spent almost all of that month at home in Andover with him and my mom, taking him to the hospital, setting up radiation and chemo therapy, and trying to offer moral support. I was just about to go back to work when my father died, and we had the memorial service for him, and all that.
MU finished the radiation and chemo in July, and had a follow up scan in August. The results were, according his oncologists at Mass General, the best possible. Plans were made for surgery on 9/9 to cut out part of his stomach, where the tumor had been, to prevent it returning and spreading. Once the operation began, however, the doctors observed little spots of cancer spread across his stomach and into his intestines. It was too late to perform the surgery, or to hope for a cure.
My whole family is stunned by this, and I can only imagine how terrible this must be for MU, given his tendency to assume the worst and worry about what can go wrong. Imagine going to sleep before an operation to cure you, only to wake up and be told you're going to die?
We got a second opinion at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and we're going to have them take over MU's treatment. He likes their facility and atmosphere better. In a couple of weeks, he will start more chemo therapy, which we hope will hold things at bay for a while. How long, we don't know. If I understand that statistics correctly, the five year survival rate is 10 to 20 percent, which is pretty bad, but hardly a fait accompli.
I'm going to switch from salary to hourly at work, so I can take off whenever I need to, and they have promised to do everything they can to give us all the time and support we need. I can't properly express how grateful I am for this, not just for my family, but for me.
I have never experienced anything like this before. When Mom had cancer ten years ago, it was clear that they were both new and hadn't spread. The operations to deal with them went smoothly, and she needed little follow up treatment. I didn't truly appreciate then how ridiculously rare and lucky that was. Now I do, because I just want to curl up and hide from this. I'm going to be away for much of the next week, and I plan to do useful stuff at the old family home, and I really don't want to go to work. It feels like such a burden to be there and deal with the challenges we face right now. (It's a whole separate post, but basically Lefty and I put our faith in the wrong guy to head up the Northampton store when Lefty went to New York. It's emotionally very draining, and by far the biggest mistake of my life, as well as the worst misjudgement of character I have ever made.) It feels like a weight pressing on my chest.
I'll try and post about some of the other noteworthy stuff, like my fun vacation to DragonCon, my failed attempts at romance, and maybe even gaming or something.
MU finished the radiation and chemo in July, and had a follow up scan in August. The results were, according his oncologists at Mass General, the best possible. Plans were made for surgery on 9/9 to cut out part of his stomach, where the tumor had been, to prevent it returning and spreading. Once the operation began, however, the doctors observed little spots of cancer spread across his stomach and into his intestines. It was too late to perform the surgery, or to hope for a cure.
My whole family is stunned by this, and I can only imagine how terrible this must be for MU, given his tendency to assume the worst and worry about what can go wrong. Imagine going to sleep before an operation to cure you, only to wake up and be told you're going to die?
We got a second opinion at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and we're going to have them take over MU's treatment. He likes their facility and atmosphere better. In a couple of weeks, he will start more chemo therapy, which we hope will hold things at bay for a while. How long, we don't know. If I understand that statistics correctly, the five year survival rate is 10 to 20 percent, which is pretty bad, but hardly a fait accompli.
I'm going to switch from salary to hourly at work, so I can take off whenever I need to, and they have promised to do everything they can to give us all the time and support we need. I can't properly express how grateful I am for this, not just for my family, but for me.
I have never experienced anything like this before. When Mom had cancer ten years ago, it was clear that they were both new and hadn't spread. The operations to deal with them went smoothly, and she needed little follow up treatment. I didn't truly appreciate then how ridiculously rare and lucky that was. Now I do, because I just want to curl up and hide from this. I'm going to be away for much of the next week, and I plan to do useful stuff at the old family home, and I really don't want to go to work. It feels like such a burden to be there and deal with the challenges we face right now. (It's a whole separate post, but basically Lefty and I put our faith in the wrong guy to head up the Northampton store when Lefty went to New York. It's emotionally very draining, and by far the biggest mistake of my life, as well as the worst misjudgement of character I have ever made.) It feels like a weight pressing on my chest.
I'll try and post about some of the other noteworthy stuff, like my fun vacation to DragonCon, my failed attempts at romance, and maybe even gaming or something.