Laughs, Tears, and Jabba-the-Hut

Hello everyone. This is the patient's daughter checking in again. I thought I would provide some new information. Yesterday, we met with the doctors at EuroMed. My mom, Devra and I sat around a little circular table with Wanda and the head doctors to discuss her treatment plan. We all agreed that the biggest problem right now is the enormous amount of swelling my mom is experiencing. We are guessing that she has gained around thirty pounds of water weight. To put it in perspective, that is over five big bags of sugar she has to carry every time she moves around. Of course, she approaches it with a sense of humor, calling herself Jabba-the-Hutt. We’ve had a few giggles over that one (especially when she kept saying it in front of the doctors and they couldn’t respond in fear of insulting her!) Anyway, the doctor’s seemed very optimistic. Her white blood cell count has gone up and her lung may be ready to have the catheter removed. We will be taking the necessary steps in the next few weeks to finally get that darn thing out of her! At the end of the meeting, it was concluded that my mom will receive IV Albumin. Her natural levels are low, which is known to cause severe swelling and shortness of breath. We are hoping this will allow her body to drain some of the excess fluid that is storing mainly in her abdomen and causing an extremely uncomfortable amount of pressure. Next step (on Thursday after IPT) is giving her a diuretic. Then we move onto the IV vitamin C and pray that her lung will continue to drain nothing. Then we can do chest x-rays and remove the tube!

As I said, we are taking this moment by moment. My mom was on phone calls with her clients for three hours yesterday. I love how strong and confident she automatically becomes when she is helping other people. I am inspired by her unfailing ability to find energy and positivity when it comes to her work. After her phone calls she talked energetically with the doctors for another hour. So it was not a huge surprise that by the time we got home, she was exhausted and in pain. She spent the rest of the day on the couch while Devra took care of calling the hospital to check how long the chest x-ray/catheter removal process would take. She made my mom comfortable, got her everything she needed, kept things neat and took care of Butters. All the while she managed to remain relaxed and cheerful. It is so wonderful to have her out here. 

This morning was hard. We headed to the clinic early because my mom wanted oxygen. She was feeling very short of breath. With all that fluid squeezing up against her diaphragm and lungs, this makes some sense. The doctors arranged for her to receive oxygen at home. We all know this sounds bad, but it really is just a precautionary measure to provide my mom with more comfort while they work on reducing her swelling. We were joking yesterday that my mom needs that giant juicer they used to squeeze Scarlet back to normal in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! Unfortunately EuroMed doesn’t seem to have this contraption in stock right now.

My mom plans on blogging again very soon. She would have done it yesterday, but we all agreed that this blog is for her and she shouldn’t feel the slightest bit of pressure to write if she is not up to it. For now, I will try my best to fill in the gaps when I can. My love to all the friends and family who follow this crazy cancer adventure. As I said before, your support means the world to both of us.