It’s been another very long day for me, and one where I felt I got none of the things I wanted to get done… done. Sigh.
I’ve been getting more than a few emails in the past week or two from people asking how my Mom is doing, so I figure I’ll post an update, to get you all up to speed.
With my Mom, she’s no longer getting chemo, and at times it seems like the Ottawa Cancer clinic has just kind of forgotten about her, or pushed her to the side. She’s taking pain meds every day now, but has put on a lot of weight (very good news). Still she’s fairly lethargic and gets out of breath very easily. She does hear positive news from time to time, and most recently, was invited to get a “treat you like royalty” service from another cancer organization – they come by once a week and basically do anything and everything she wants! 🙂
She has gotten some minor hope – her MD says that the main lump still in her body seems to be shrinking. Right now we don’t know. I am concerned that she has to take so much morphine just to get through the day.
With my Dad, something I haven’t made “public” till now: he had triple bypass heart surgery a week ago today. My Dad has got to start taking care of things a bit better, and maybe this is his “wake up call”. He quit smoking when he had a minor stroke back in his mid-late 30s, (quit cold turkey, just like that), so maybe this will put a new scare into him.
He came through the operation okay, but has a bunch of new scars, and will require quite some time to recover. He’s not quite out of the woods yet, but we’re all positive. I’ve been kind of putting his operation in the back of my mind because to be frank, the impact of my Mom’s illness and my Dad’s heart problems combined were too tough to bear at the same time.
Now that he’s through it, I can talk about it more. So he’s got new shiny valves connected to his pumper inside, and soon, he’ll be feeling like an energized Mr. Burns! 🙂 And get this, later this year, he’s having one (or both, I can’t remember) of his knees replaced. Yes, replaced.
I figure next time I call him, I may have to have the Steve Austin (6 million dollar man, not stone cold) theme song playing in the background, and start off with the words “we can rebuild him. Better. Stronger. Faster…”