Friday, 10/3/03 - 20:40
I thought some of you would want to know, and I thought I'd better just write the story now so that I can comment on it later.
September 2001 in Detroit: Mom-sub-B had thyroid cancer, but fortunately the kind that grows slowly and doesn't do a whole lot. The treatment involved consuming material that made even her sweat toxic, and she wasn't allowed to be around other people, especially pregnant women. But at least it had a lot fewer adverse affects than normal chemotherapy because most cells don't pick it up. For a while her voice sounded terrible and soft and too much like the archetypical librarian's.
Early August 2003: Everyone was worried about a lump that could be breast cancer. It turns out to be benign.
Late August 2003: Do Dos Equis count as a clear liquid? Mom was getting a routine colonoscopy -- she's 52 and apparently you're supposed to have colonoscopies regularly after 50 -- so we were sending e-mails back and forth, bitching about all the shit she had to put up with, and trying to figure out the least agonizing way to drink bowel-cleansing salty ginger drink. So the next day I get this, which I thought I'd share because it made me giggle for days:
When I woke up from the colonoscopy, I was dreaming we were in Hawaii and I was so peaceful and happy. I was talking to Ted in my dream, but as I woke up realized I was talking aloud saying, "This has been just wonderful. I really hope we can do something like this again some time."
Mom immediately clarified to all the hospital staff standing around that she had been dreaming. They reacted like cardboard cut-outs, which is apparently how they're trained to respond if patients do anything embarrassing.
Early September: Of course, that story was a lot more funny before she got diagnosed with colon cancer... Which isn't to deny that as cancers go, colon cancer is sort of funny, especially since apparently three of my grandfather's brothers died of it.
Anyway, they removed a polyp during the colonoscopy and they removed it sloppily because they figured there was no way it was cancerous. But it was. The cancer was relatively far up the intestine, which means that if they decide to do a bigger operation to take it all out, she'll be headed for the InvasiCare Clinic as opposed to some new-fangled technique involving a tube. The doctor figured that there was a 3% chance that he hadn't gotten the whole thing out, but he also figured that an operation to take out more material had a 3% chance of further lethal complications. So he decided to do a PET scan to see whether it picked up any cancer he'd missed. At this point we all thought the cancer seemed like a goofy soap-opera plot device.
Late September: The PET scan picks up a big tumor in Mom's chest with metastases clawing out in several directions, and X-rays or something like that confirm it. The part of the tumor they can see turns out to be 4 cm, but there's another lobe behind that. We talked about it on Monday while I stuck broccoli plants in their pre-measured holes in the ground.
Where'd it come from? It seems to be more thyroid cancer, having been growing slowly for the last two years. If so, the reason it didn't show up on all the follow-up thyroid cancer tests would be because it's a very special cancer that doesn't take up radioactive iodine. But who knows. They'll biopsy it later this month to find out for sure. If it is that, then it's slow growing but it's also a chronic condition with no known treatment. You just surgically remove pieces of tumor when they start to cause problems, until sooner or later it gets some place where you can't do that and then you die. The doctor, trying to be reassuring, told my mom that a lot of his patients with that kind of cancer lived "several years."
Mom's so upbeat about the whole thing that it's hard to worry much when I talk with her. My first reaction was that it was absurd, even somewhat humorous, and I don't think that's a false reaction. Maybe any serious news you discuss by phone while planting broccoli is absurd, but look at the ridiculously overdrawn and melodramatic narrative structures, look at the snail's pace that everything's moving at, look at the series of bizarre accidents leading up to the diagnosis.
The thing that right now seems sadder than anything is that our kids might not know either of their grandparents on my side. Once we know for sure what kind of cancer it is and what the prognosis is, we're going to have to decide whether to get pregnant ASAP -- which worries me, because it might be a really bad idea. On the other hand, I don't even know that I'd want to be pregnant and having our first-born if my mom wouldn't be around for it. It would be so easy to end up completely isolated and lonely (except for Ted, who's always been there) like I was during wedding planning and I'd just spend most of my days crying. But we're trying to defer worrying about that for now.
In any case, I'm glad we got to spend almost a month of the summer together.
Long live Diaryland!
The five most recent entries:
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Anniversary Diving - Friday, 8/12/05
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Academic Feelings - Thursday, 4/21/05
Ted's most recent entry:
Monday, May 12