Hey guys,
I’ve been meaning to write, just a short update, after hard news for us again at the end of August.
And, I jumped on a plane back home too.
Just before Memorial Day, we got the results of the investigations and MRI for second and third opinions of Mum’s stage IV colorectal cancer. It was heart-breaking to learn that the chemotherapy was not seeming to have effect, the volume and size of metastasized lesions on her liver increasing (and was a large number in the first place).
For Mum’s quality of life, and with both her and Dad choosing this, they accepted the recommendation to stop chemo.
The harder qualification was that the impact of the cancer’s damage on her liver may not take long to play out. The stats were shared, but Mum chose to leave the room for this part of the meeting, I was delighted to hear.
Pete had flown home for that second prognosis meeting, and I joined last week. Keara too got on a plane, with gorgeous Daisy. Four months pregnant with number two, she brought forward her maternity leave by a few months. I have been able to work from Donegal with best efforts from an office Mum and Dad made here.
Mum is doing better than I feared on landing – though visibly thinned, delicate to hug and with jaundice showing sadly in the morning.
She is up for most of the day, enjoys the hum of us milling around and every few hours will shut her eyes or fall asleep for a while in a fancy new recliner chair that Dad treated, back in the days after first diagnosis.
Mum is in good spirits too, mostly. Though, she struggles with digestion issues and loathes the cocktail of drugs that keep things moving – her liver giving her dull pain much of the time.
Mum is very private, and so had hardly been into Donegal town since her diagnosis in June, yet we snuck her out the other night – to a side room in her favorite curry house. That was special. She mostly loved it, I think. But too I can’t imagine what must have been going through her mind, and the challenge to such a proud woman, reappearing in town, her life so different. And us all in denial as to what is left.
Dad is OK while everyday heartbroken, as you’d expect.
I think possibly a little stronger emotionally than when I arrived, as this second phase becomes “new normal” and the shock recedes.
Us all being back has really helped him, both in caring for Mum and managing the house and with a whiskey companion at the end of the day.
The local community has been amazing: dinner or toys are randomly dropped by from time to time. So we often have more food than we’re getting through!
It’s a slow, hard tragedy for us but too I am happy every time I see Mum.
I am still often numb in this, then melancholic and then happy. Happy being with Mum…and then getting on as you do…as many of you will know having been through a similarly confusing and sad dance with parents, brothers and sisters or sick friends.
We’ve had an awfully good run of luck before this – and still count our chickens in that.
Glad to share, and thanks for the different messages where the news has spread.
From majestic, early autumnal Mountcharles, Co Donegal.
Kevin
