New to this board...

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-04-2008
New to this board...
9
Sat, 01-05-2008 - 10:55am

I usually am not on this board... but I have to find somewhere to go to talk about stuff. My husband and I just moved to a new city in August so we don't have any real friends and no family here. My mom and dad came to visit us this week to celebrate Christmas and my sister came too. My mom was feeling kinda sick and then vomited a little blood. She had been having some pain in her back for the last few weeks between the shoulder blades. They thought it was a gallbladder attack so they went to the hospital. Unfortunately, it was not.. they found a mass (did not say size) at the head of the pancreas. They also found two lesions on her liver. They went in to put in a stint? to keep the pancreas bile duct flowing so she doesn't get jaundiced. Nobody has said the C word yet, but the doctor keeps saying if "it" is what they will do. Nobody is optimistic with it and the doctor just kept saying, "I wish I had better news."

She has to go to a larger hospital to get a very new procedure done, and endoscopic ultrasound so my dad is going to take her to the Mayo clinic near where he lives in MN. Right now I'm just praying that those lesions are not also cancer. I have all of these hopes and dreams and things that I want to do with my mom. She is only 54. I am only 26. I want her to see me have kids and for them to grow up knowing their grandma. I lost my grandma at age 8 to breast cancer. My whole world just came crashing down... you just expect to lose your grandparents before your own mom. My grandparents are 86, 80 and 79. This is all just so crazy and I wish it was a dream :(

How can this be and why did it have to be one of the worst kinds of cancers there is. I could have lived with breast cancer or ovarian or something else!!!! I just don't know how to not be hysterical about this.

Jaime

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DaisypathNext Anniversary Ticker
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 01-05-2008 - 11:46am

Jamie,


Oh how i know all to well how you feel.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Sun, 01-06-2008 - 5:04pm

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Hello Jaime


I am so sorry your family is going through so much right now.

Hope everyone has a great Summer!

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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-04-2008
Sun, 01-06-2008 - 8:22pm

Hi,


i read your letter and got goosebumps. My mom has always been a strong, sef-sufficiant woman, who raised 3 girls and a grandson on her own. She's 61 now and is still raising her 14 year old mentally challanged grandson. i could give you all of those details, but we can save that for later if your interested. anyway, on new years day of /07, i found my mom in a diabetic coma. she also had phneumonia, and was incoherent at the best of times, even for her 2 week stay at the hospital. My mom made it through, but she grows weaker every day. I wait for the call that i dread. She won't let us baby her, and she's having a very hard time passing the torch at family gatherings. she loves to feed people! she's on so many meds that we cant keep them all straight. I guess that what im saying is that my mom is my best friend. she always has been. I can't bear to lose her. but now ive been diagnosed with the big C, and im not sure of the outcome yet. we're waiting for more biopsy results. Please know that you and your family are being prayed for,


iVillage Member
Registered: 01-04-2008
Tue, 01-15-2008 - 8:19pm
I don't have the energy to write much right now, but I wanted to let you all know that I thank you for the prayers. The preliminary biopsy results are back and it looks to be adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. This is not the news we wanted and it is heartbreaking. I kept up home that it was a form of cancer of the pancreas that causes endocrine problems.. as these are a lot of the problems she has been having. I will write more when I know more and feel better.
Jaime

DaisypathNext Anniversary Ticker
DaisypathNext Anniversary Ticker
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-06-2007
Thu, 01-17-2008 - 10:57pm

hugsflowers.gif image by maggie3333


I am sorry, Jaime, that you got news that it is cancer.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-30-2008
Wed, 01-30-2008 - 11:27am

Dear Retired Skater,

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-03-2008
Sun, 02-03-2008 - 12:19am

Dear Jaime


iVillage Member
Registered: 01-04-2008
Wed, 06-25-2008 - 6:45pm

I am sorry that I really haven't updated anything about my mom to this board since the preliminary results. It has been a roller coaster ride the last few months of my mom's life. After she got the results, she began chemotherapy with both gemcytabine and Tarceva. Ironically, my mom tested Gemzar as a toxicologist over 20 yrs ago when she worked for Eli Lilly. The chemo seemed to be doing a good job and the tumor was actually shrinking. There was a lot of evidence of necrosis of the cancer in her liver.

Then, suddenly, things changed. My mom was getting a lot of swelling in her left arm and they didn't know why. They hospitalized her for about the eighth time since her first one in January. She was feeling pretty good so she was really irritable in the hospital. They kept doing scan after scan after scan, for like 8-10 hours a day three days straight. Finally, an ultrasound revealed that the cancer had spread to her armpit area lymph nodes and they were not able to bring fluids out of her arm. That was the beginning of the end, but we didn't know it at the time. The kidneys were working overtime trying to get that fluid moving.

She went into renal failure the following week, and they called me to tell me I needed to come back from Tennessee to see mom and that it was urgent. I didn't know she was dying until I was in Florida though. I still feel very guilty that I didn't get home in time to really discuss things with her one last time. By the time I got to the hospital, she was mostly unconscious and my dad was making arrangements to get her taken home via ambulance so she could be in hospice.

She knew I was there because she would occasionally open her eyes and try to mouth "I love you" those first couple of days she was home. It was heartbreaking knowing that she was still with us but that she couldn't really talk to us. I guess she was slipping into another world, and going through all of the things that she had done in her life. She had a nurse there 24 hours a day and it was such a blessing not having to actually take care of her, but just to be there and sit with her. I recommend hospice whole-heartedly.

Finally, over the weekend the last few days of her life things got really stressful. Death was so imminent, and on the one hand we all just wanted it to come so it would be done, but we didn't want the time to be there. My sister and I had a big fight the morning before her death and I almost walked out just to be away from it. Finally, just after noon, they called me down and told me that it was almost time. My mom took her last breath in her bedroom on Sunday April 20th at 12:38pm with my dad, her sister and husband, my sister, her best friend and the hospice nurse in the room. We had a memorial service for her the following Thursday, my 27th birthday.

Since that time, I have been in real denial about everything, even though I didn't know I was. I had not allowed myself to really be sad over it or grieve yet. Now, I am sad all of the time. I wish she was still here, and I wish she could hold me and tell me everything was going to be all right. I hate cancer, and I hate what it has done to my family. My dad is so crazy with grief that he has done nothing but make bad decisions since my mom died. I am getting a divorce and the worst part about all of this is that I feel that nobody understands the grief that I feel and that people think I'm crazy when any little thing sets me off either in anger or sadness.

Jaime

DaisypathNext Anniversary Ticker
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-06-2007
Wed, 06-25-2008 - 10:08pm

Jaime, I am so sorry that your mom passed away.

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