The Cancer Battle

People often describe the cancer experience with words like  battle, bravery, courage, war, fight.  I never quite understood it, but I am not the patient. I do see Melanoma Man's determination and courage throughout his experience. One of the tools he uses is knowing just enough, not too much about his disease. I know too much. He doesn't remember June 10-June 18 and it is just as well. Some days he asks me three or four times, " are you going to work next week?" He has forgotten that he tried to turn the tv on with his cell phone, tried to open an envelope with a pair of glasses, tried to adjust the air conditioning in the car using the radio volume button, or open the car door with the window button, can't open jars, forgets to turn off the stove. Most importantly he has forgotten that the neurologist has said he is not to be left unsupervised. His hand eye coordination is still a little bit off, dropping things throughout the day, short of breath, yet planning to cook all next week. Still making plans which is admirable. I do understand the war analogy from the perspective of trauma and how it has changed me. I try to keep it at bay through continuous doing, taking another step, making another list. Then I find myself depleted. Sunday night was one such night. I woke up at 11 with "the headache" which isn't really a headache but more of a whole body experience of pain, chills, nausea, vomiting. I got in the car at 7 which is when Publix opens. I planned to get Coca-cola and saltines. I turned back for home after vomiting out my window a few times. I was trying to pull myself together in time to get MM to his appointment with interventional radiology at 10. I wasn't able to pull it off, so called them to reschedule. I sent MK a text around 8 or 9: "would you bring me a coke(not diet!) and some saltines?" MK brought just that and her good company and her willingness to sit with us in the living room, watching the weather channel and chatting and just being fearlessly with us in spite of our mortality.

An hour at the beach

That's where I am with iMac who turned 16 this week. I left MM at home by himself, not ideal. I made him demonstrate that he could make an outgoing call and answer an incoming call. No cooking, no operating heavy machinery. He concocted the beach outing with iMac. Once iMac and I were on board he extricated himself from the plan. iMac certainly needed it,  iMac spent the mornings this week volunteering at church with Vacation Bible School. The afternoons were spent working on physics and hanging with Mom and Dad. Just before we leave the house today, I tell MM he has made a lot of progress. He shakes his head no. It's not enough progress. He will never return to his former self. There may be improvements certainly, but nothing will be carefree.

Day 7 at home

Today sentences are clearer. He cannot remember his phone number or mine or how to use his credit card at CVS. There are periods of the day when speech gets more mixed up. He asks me if he is having a seizure. He is still speaking real words. Most of the words belong in the sentence, but the sentence structure is wrong. He can open the car door. He cannot remember how to use the remote unlock feature to get a book out of the car. His other brother Doug left today. People can be exhausting even when they are helping. Anxiety looms up in the car when I am alone for 5 minutes dropping iMac at his volunteer job and at night when I wake up. There was a month of mostly sleepless nights for me before the seizures started. I filled the time watching House of Cards, all 52 episodes. Now I have moved on to Frankie and Grace on the advice of Sara G. We are at Quest for the second day in a row. They did not draw enough blood. The labs are required for the flow study. The flow study will determine why his power port is not working. Both Lori (his infusion nurse) and I have been unable to get a blood return from the port. She suspects that the seizures which occurred in all of the muscles on the right side of his body caused the port catheter to move. Sounds likely. Melanoma Man chooses a movie for us to watch tonight, Bourne Identity, no coincidence as MM loses his identity,

One Glorious Day with the Keys

Wednesday June 8th I drove Melanoma Man to Tampa to see Dr. Etame and have his first post brain radiation MRI. We were quiet in the car going down. The MRI showed improvement in both craniotomy sites. These words appeared in the report:"No new metastatic lesions. Remainder of lesions are stable." Dr. Etame cleared him to drive again. We waited by Valet parking. I had been battling a sinus infection and cough for 5 weeks, just finishing antibiotics and prednisone 3 days before, but feeling yuck. I was happy for him to drive home. Thursday I was off to work. Melanoma Man cooked dinner almost every night this week, the first time since February. Friday June 10, 6:50 a.m. we talked about our plans for the day. MM planned to take imac to Kohl's to shop for clothes. imac and Butter are growing out of clothes at an alarming rate. imac was scheduled to leave for Nashville in a few days on a mission trip with church. Butter was scheduled to leave for Boyscout leadership training  on June 11.

Friday morning I was feeling a little better. I had been back to my doctor Thursday afternoon. He prescribed another course of antibiotics and prednisone. I was in the Allergy Shot room at work. My first four patients had come and gone. My cell phone rang, a call from imac at 9:45. I answered, which I usually don't at work. imac does not call for routine issues. He always sends a text. Today he said "Dad is having trouble talking." I told him I was on my way. I called Sara G. She was home and agreed to drive over to be with imac and MM until I arrived. I assumed, incorrectly, that this would be just like the last time in February, that full speech would return within 10-20 minutes. It did not. I advised MM of the plan. I would drive him downtown to the hospital where they would do CTscan and MRI to determine if he was having swelling or bleeding in his brain. I drove faster than usual, passing a police car on the highway and thinking that was a mistake. The stroke team assessed him within 4 minutes of arrival. He was in the CTscanner within 10 minutes. No bleeding, no clots, no blockage of arteries. The neurologist said he had global aphasia. He could neither understand, nor express language. We waited for 2 more tests. His hands got weaker. He could no longer say "Yes, No, It's ok." Those were the three things he could say when I arrived home. He could not follow commands. He had no sensation to pain. He returned from the EEG lab with his head wrapped in gauze. All the EEG probes still in place and a portable laptop which showed his brain waves in real time. The nurse asked why he still had the probes on. I overheard the EEG tech say "He's in Status." "Status Epilepticus?!" I asked. She said the doctor would come to talk to me about it. I knew it was serious, but it had been a long long time since my neurology days, which were exclusively in nursing school and as a hospital volunteer during high school. I just knew it was bad. He spent an hour making sounds, trying desperately to tell me something. Finally I said: " Do you have to pee?" He nodded his head. I felt so dumb. By 4:30 we were on the Neuro step down unit. Two IV anti seizure drugs had been administered, a third about to start. He was still in status. Sara G spent the night with the kids. The Critical Care doc came to talk to me about intubating  MM, sedating him, and putting him on a ventilator for 3 days to stop the seizure. I said No intubation, No compressions, No defibrillation. She told me there was a good chance he would die. Keep the kids home from the mission trip in Nashville and the BoyScout Leadership training in Atlanta, she said. Sometime Saturday morning the seizures stopped. He slept almost all day Saturday. When he was awake he spoke nonsense and desperately pointed at the pictures on the picture chart or the wrong letters on the alphabet chart.He would point to E while saying LLL? It was a long day. Sunday was harder. Each time I went in his room he asked for his lawyer, tried to get out of his bed while hooked up to EKG and Pulse Oximeter and various other monitors. I had to leave. They gave him IV clonipin, put him in restraints for a short time. After he calmed they assigned a sitter or companion to him full time. I went home to sleep. The next day proved nicer. The days blended and blurred and soon 6 days had passed. They were sending him home. The man I brought home doesn't remember how to open a car door, shaves with the handle of the razor if no mirror is available,  could not button or zip or read. He could talk in a fashion. The talking has gotten better each day. Today he dressed himself, except socks. The auditory hallucinations continue. I'm not sure if the visual ones do. At one point during the hospitalization we were told the Brain MRI was much worse than the one in March. Twenty four hours later, oops! We forgot to look at the Brain MRI from March. He got discharged with one correct RX, one incorrect RX and one missing RX. I should have paid more attention, now it was past 6 and the physician's office would be closed. The CVS pharmacist, Ryan, picked up on the medication error. Ryan was willing to give me a few tablets after we discussed what the usual dose would be. In the morning I called the Neurology clinic about the prescription and to schedule a hospital follow up. Initially they said I would need to call the hospital to have the prescribing physician paged. The hospital operator refused to do it. I called back to the Neurology clinic, after having left messages at the hospital that I knew would go unanswered. Tammy, the office manager, contacted the prescribing physician to make the corrections. Tammy called back to say there was a third medication for seizures the doctor had forgotten to give us. To be continued...