Introductions are always so hard to write.. I'm happy to be here, but not really, I wish I didn't have to be here at all, I know none of us do. I'm quite thankful, however that there is a place that we can all come together as one and do our best to best this thing. I'm rapidly approaching 40, married with 3 fuzzy kids (2 keeshonds and their kitty) and a quazi-normal life... ahh but then again what really is normal?
My mom is 66, smoker for 45+ years - her sister who is 8 years older than she is was diagnosed with lung cancer in December. 3 weeks ago mom started having some pains in her leg and went to her GP. While she was there, she had him look at a place in her neck that had been bothering her.. they did some chest xrays and a CT of the chest, long story short, they ended up doing a biopsy and the report.. adenocarcinoma.
We met with an oncologist at our cancer center (which we all adored him) Last week, she had the CT's of the had, neck, abdomen and pelvis. Bone scan and PET. The scans revealed tumors in her neck (which was what was biopsied) both lungs, and small ones on her liver, spleen and adrenal gland. Non Small Cell Adenocarcinoma, stage IV that started in the lung. Thankfully, bone and brain were both clear.
Tuesday we start chemo - I'm quite impressed with how quickly the oncologist is moving on this - she'll have 4 treatments of Carbo/Taxl and the 5th treatment will be Avastin - I've not done my research on what these will do to the cancer as well as her - that's my next step.
She tries to be strong, at least in front of me, and I her - my father (he's 77) is treating her with kid gloves when she doesn't want to be treated any differently.. she says she's the same person she was last week, last moth, last year and doesn't want to be treated like an invalid.. so I'm not, I'm letting her do what she can (she's been very weak the last 2 weeks) and letting her tell me when she needs help. This is ultimately her fight, I'm just here to catch her when she stumbles, cheer her on in the face of adversity, to celebrate the triumphs, to comfort the sadness, and to help her from letting dad drive her crazy. As soon as I get a piece of information I try to do as much research as I can, so I can be informed, so she can be informed. I'm convinced that having as much knowledge as we can have is one of the key components to fighting this.
