A year ago today my Mom died. The past year I feel like I've been in a haze, not knowing how to go forward after the destiny I had was forever altered. I'm not familiar with that kind of shock that lasts this amount of time. You feel it and then you don't feel it; you know what's happened and then you don't really know what happened. I have not come to terms with my losses. I am still trying to figure out how to move on. It's hard to imagine that it's not going to go back to how it was.
Dad is hanging in there. His live-in caregivers are awesome, I can't properly express what a relief that is. Mentally he's doing much better then anyone of us expected; his long-term memory is intact, his judgment skills and short term memory are impaired, but not too bad all things considered, and he's learning ways to workaround them, it's pretty remarkable. Physically he's doing really well and is taking daily walks. My brother & sis-in-law are flying in tonight for a long weekend and I'm taking tomorrow thru Tuesday as vacation.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
JCICS - Call to Action
On Monday, April 12, 2010, Joint Council on International Children's Services (JCICS) issued a Call To Action regarding Intercountry adoption in Russia. The goal is to ensure that intercountry adoption continues uninterrupted and to aggressively investigate and prosecute anyone involved in the abuse of children. I hope for all our sakes that JCICS is successful!!
Friday, April 9, 2010
Adoption News Story
Gee, I guess adopting for Russia is probably now out too. This recent news story is truly sickening. To summarize...a single woman from Tennessee adopted a 7 year old boy last year from Russia. This week, she put him on a plane back to Russia alone with a note saying he has serious psychological problems and that she no longer wished to parent him.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/09/russia-urges-adoption-freeze-american-returns-boy/?test=latestnews
I am very worried for all those who are are in process and for the kids who will be left behind. This woman may have ruined things for a lot of innocent children and prospective adoptive parents. During her process to adopt this woman had to have been educated about issues in older adopted children and treatment options. Regardless of whether this kid was violent or had serious psychological problems, there are legal ways of dissolving an adoption which do NOT involve abandonment! Now I am hearing rumors that Kazakhstan will also suspend adoptions. I am really hoping that is not the case. It is already increasingly hard for singles to adopt internationally.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/09/russia-urges-adoption-freeze-american-returns-boy/?test=latestnews
I am very worried for all those who are are in process and for the kids who will be left behind. This woman may have ruined things for a lot of innocent children and prospective adoptive parents. During her process to adopt this woman had to have been educated about issues in older adopted children and treatment options. Regardless of whether this kid was violent or had serious psychological problems, there are legal ways of dissolving an adoption which do NOT involve abandonment! Now I am hearing rumors that Kazakhstan will also suspend adoptions. I am really hoping that is not the case. It is already increasingly hard for singles to adopt internationally.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
No More Pregnancies
Yesterday sucked, okay the last 11 months has sucked, but yesterday was especially horrible. I got all the test results from my D&C and they came back clean (meaning: I do not have cancer). Also, my uterus is still intact, however Dr. F said that was seriously touch and go during the D&C whether she would be able to save my uterus as I was bleeding so heavily and there was so much more placenta in the uterus that they were caught unaware. Dr. F tells me I am an "interesting case." Umm...no one wants to be considered an interesting case, that is not good to hear from an extremely accomplished doctor. The placenta somehow still had a blood supply (hello! it should be necrotic!) and my hormones were still at a level that my bloodtests kept coming back that I was pregnant, even 3 months after delivery! More importantly she explained that I had developed an infection. She doesn't know if the infection had caused my miscarriage or not. Fabulous.
Either way, no more pregnancies. I said that I wanted someone else to make that decision, and the doctor did. I got my wish, right? Shouldn't that bring me some sort of peace? No, not really. I am devastated. If you've lost a child, you understand what the thought of a brother or sister to your child you lost means. While another baby can NEVER replace the baby who died, there is a feeling of joy & hope at the thought of being pregnant again and seeing in a brother or sister what you sadly only now see in a picture.
Either way, no more pregnancies. I said that I wanted someone else to make that decision, and the doctor did. I got my wish, right? Shouldn't that bring me some sort of peace? No, not really. I am devastated. If you've lost a child, you understand what the thought of a brother or sister to your child you lost means. While another baby can NEVER replace the baby who died, there is a feeling of joy & hope at the thought of being pregnant again and seeing in a brother or sister what you sadly only now see in a picture.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Glioblastoma Multiforme
Really?! You could not make this shit up. Yes, apparently life can get worse for me & my family. I didn't think it was possible, but on Wednesday, March 17th, I get a phone call from an EMT telling me that they are taking my Dad to the hospital. Minutes later, I rush over to the hospital to find my almost 63-year-old Dad being evaluated by the ER physician. Dad knows who I am, but is confused & disheveled, smelly & dirty. I call my brother who lives thousands of miles away to try and catch him as he & his wife are scheduled to leave that day for a 2 week vacation in China! Back to the story...friends of my Dad were taking a walk and found him sitting in his car in his driveway, unconscious, slumped over the steering wheel...we don't know for how long he was in the car as he lives alone.
The ER doctor runs a battery of tests and suspects it was a stroke but can't know for sure & she sends him for a cat scan and calls in a neurosurgeon to analyze the results. As the hours pass, we are greeted by the neurosurgeon who has now had a chance to study the cat scan and he declares there are multiple brain tumors! I make the Social Worker cry with my story of losing my Mom, my babies, and now this. The neurosurgeon wants to transfer Dad right away to a Trauma 1 Center as he will eventually require brain surgery. Dad is transferred that day to a different hospital and is placed in ICU. It is not looking good.
A full body scan (MRI) is done to determine if any other tumors are present in the body, to determine where these tumors originated...we wait for those results...in the meantime, Dad is put on massive amounts of steroids to decrease the swelling in the brain. Later that day the neurosurgeon preps me that they need to do the surgery that Thursday morning to release the swelling and at the same time to do a biopsy.
After the nearly 4 hour surgery is over, the neurosurgeon comes & takes me to a small room to talk. I am alone. He informs me that the initial biopsy results show that the tumors are malignant and the prognosis is really bad, he has Glioblastoma, the same thing that Senator Ted Kennedy had, except according to the neurosurgeon, Dad's case is much worse than Kennedy's. I am in total shock & disbelief.
My brother arrived that evening and we go see Dad. Dad is back in the ICU. At this point, I am somewhat de-sensitized from the ICU and machines, etc. but my brother is not, and the heartbreak starts anew. Our Mom hasn't even been dead a year we cry in frustration and anger!! The ICU nurses were incredible, absolutely incredible, I don't know how they do this. My brother shares our story with the ICU nurse about what we've been through and she cries! Oh boy, first a social worker and now a hardened & seasoned ICU nurse reduced to tears over our life story, this is bad! He came out of surgery - a craniotomy - and was very tired. He was orientated to both time and place. We visit with Dad till 10pm, my brother who had been traveling all day to get there is exhausted and since Dad needed rest, we left for the night. A 2:30 a.m. phone call woke us up. The ICU nurse told us he was having trouble breathing on his own so he was intubated. We drove over to the hospital. Asleep, a propofol drip running into his left arm. One of several lines attached to him; feeding him, hydrating him, giving him oxygen. All day spent at his side. Hours passed. An attempt to let him breathe more on his own the oxygen in the ventilation tube was reduced. A few hours later they raised the oxygen levels back up. The propofol drip was turned off so he could be better monitored. 12 hours later (I think), the ventilator was making sure he was taken at least 12 breaths a minute, but he was actually taking 15 breaths, so this meant he was breathing on his own!
Fast forward 3 days later, Dad was out of the ICU and onto the regular oncology ward. He was doing "okay" for this post-operative phase. He had developed pneumonia and was on an antibiotic regime. We now waited for pathology results to come back to give us a definitive diagnosis. On Tuesday, they come back confirming that it is Glioblastoma, it is a primary brain tumor which means that it originated in the brain. It is not curable & is very fast growing. Radiation & chemo could help prolong his life, but what would the quality of that life be?? Doctors have no clue how long he has, no clue.
Dad spent March 17-26 in the hospital. On March 26th, Dad was discharged to a nearby skilled nursing facility for 4 or 5 days of physical rehab. Brother and I interviewed a potential live-in aide, and we hired her on the spot. She's got great references and if hiring her will keep dad in his own home for however long, it will be a good thing. Dad's physical therapy went well yesterday, the most important thing is that he was able to get up and down the stairs with relative ease which means that we will bring him home tomorrow.
Oh and yes, I finally had the 2nd D&C during all of this on March 23rd. I was probably the most calm person they've ever had going into surgery. LOL I was so happy to get a sedative and forget my troubles at least for a few hours. It all went fine although it took much longer than they thought it would - over 3 hours! A normal D&C takes about 45 minutes. I feel fine and go back to Dr. F in 2 weeks for follow-up.
The ER doctor runs a battery of tests and suspects it was a stroke but can't know for sure & she sends him for a cat scan and calls in a neurosurgeon to analyze the results. As the hours pass, we are greeted by the neurosurgeon who has now had a chance to study the cat scan and he declares there are multiple brain tumors! I make the Social Worker cry with my story of losing my Mom, my babies, and now this. The neurosurgeon wants to transfer Dad right away to a Trauma 1 Center as he will eventually require brain surgery. Dad is transferred that day to a different hospital and is placed in ICU. It is not looking good.
A full body scan (MRI) is done to determine if any other tumors are present in the body, to determine where these tumors originated...we wait for those results...in the meantime, Dad is put on massive amounts of steroids to decrease the swelling in the brain. Later that day the neurosurgeon preps me that they need to do the surgery that Thursday morning to release the swelling and at the same time to do a biopsy.
After the nearly 4 hour surgery is over, the neurosurgeon comes & takes me to a small room to talk. I am alone. He informs me that the initial biopsy results show that the tumors are malignant and the prognosis is really bad, he has Glioblastoma, the same thing that Senator Ted Kennedy had, except according to the neurosurgeon, Dad's case is much worse than Kennedy's. I am in total shock & disbelief.
My brother arrived that evening and we go see Dad. Dad is back in the ICU. At this point, I am somewhat de-sensitized from the ICU and machines, etc. but my brother is not, and the heartbreak starts anew. Our Mom hasn't even been dead a year we cry in frustration and anger!! The ICU nurses were incredible, absolutely incredible, I don't know how they do this. My brother shares our story with the ICU nurse about what we've been through and she cries! Oh boy, first a social worker and now a hardened & seasoned ICU nurse reduced to tears over our life story, this is bad! He came out of surgery - a craniotomy - and was very tired. He was orientated to both time and place. We visit with Dad till 10pm, my brother who had been traveling all day to get there is exhausted and since Dad needed rest, we left for the night. A 2:30 a.m. phone call woke us up. The ICU nurse told us he was having trouble breathing on his own so he was intubated. We drove over to the hospital. Asleep, a propofol drip running into his left arm. One of several lines attached to him; feeding him, hydrating him, giving him oxygen. All day spent at his side. Hours passed. An attempt to let him breathe more on his own the oxygen in the ventilation tube was reduced. A few hours later they raised the oxygen levels back up. The propofol drip was turned off so he could be better monitored. 12 hours later (I think), the ventilator was making sure he was taken at least 12 breaths a minute, but he was actually taking 15 breaths, so this meant he was breathing on his own!
Fast forward 3 days later, Dad was out of the ICU and onto the regular oncology ward. He was doing "okay" for this post-operative phase. He had developed pneumonia and was on an antibiotic regime. We now waited for pathology results to come back to give us a definitive diagnosis. On Tuesday, they come back confirming that it is Glioblastoma, it is a primary brain tumor which means that it originated in the brain. It is not curable & is very fast growing. Radiation & chemo could help prolong his life, but what would the quality of that life be?? Doctors have no clue how long he has, no clue.
Dad spent March 17-26 in the hospital. On March 26th, Dad was discharged to a nearby skilled nursing facility for 4 or 5 days of physical rehab. Brother and I interviewed a potential live-in aide, and we hired her on the spot. She's got great references and if hiring her will keep dad in his own home for however long, it will be a good thing. Dad's physical therapy went well yesterday, the most important thing is that he was able to get up and down the stairs with relative ease which means that we will bring him home tomorrow.
Oh and yes, I finally had the 2nd D&C during all of this on March 23rd. I was probably the most calm person they've ever had going into surgery. LOL I was so happy to get a sedative and forget my troubles at least for a few hours. It all went fine although it took much longer than they thought it would - over 3 hours! A normal D&C takes about 45 minutes. I feel fine and go back to Dr. F in 2 weeks for follow-up.
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