There's Good News and Bad News

Hi all, and thanks again for all the good wishes.

The Princess is officially in remission. Before her second treatment, the tumor hadn't changed. But within 36 hours of her second treatment, the tumor had shrunk so much you wouldn't have been able to find it if you didn't know where to look. And as of last week, she's officially in remission. Hooray! The Doctor's very, very pleased with how she's coming along, and we did an ultrasound to make sure the inside tumors were responding as well as the outside tumors, and the news was very very good. She's got one more weekly treatment, and then we're down to once every 3 weeks. SUCH a relief. Now he's not expecting a really long remission for her, since the cancer had spread to so many places, but her rapid improvement so early in the treatment is very very good news.

Unfortunately, the rest of our month has not been so good... I haven't posted because I just couldn't wrap my head around the relentless scares and bad news.

My Dad has been diagnosed with acute bacterial endocarditis, caused by a staph infection. One of his parishioners died from it, and they think my Dad was infected while visiting the man during his last days. Pop's one of the ones with "high risk conditions", so if you listen to "Dr. G00gle", fatalities are in the 50-70% range for folks with his history of heart surgeries/conditions. But they knew he'd be at risk, they knew he'd been exposed, and they tested immediately once he started feeling fatigued so they caught it before the staph even showed up in blood tests. So the news should be good, in spite of Dr G00gle's Doom and Gloom. In the mean time he's got 4-6 weeks of daily iv antibiotics administered into his heart (I didn't ask how... I'm squeamish) down at the Doctor's office / hospital, and then we see if this particular form of staph still responds to antibiotics.

And just as I started to breathe again after that scare, my Mom's brother - who'd been wasting away for a year due to rampantly uncontrollable brain tumor - died the weekend before Thanksgiving. They originally thought it was Alzheimers, but found that his formerly in remission cancer had metastasized, and was in his brain. Those of you who have been reading for a while may remember that he's the reason I took up knitting in the first place... I'd needed something to do while staying at his house to keep him from wandering off in the middle of the night until an alternative care situation could be arranged.

I wish I was feeling up to talking about all of this in some sort of meaningful and pithy way, but I'm afraid I'm a bit numb. We're all fine, we'll all be fine, but I'm sort of in head-in-the-sand mode right now.

If you need me, I'll be in the bunker stacking up sand bags until 2009 takes the hint and GOES AWAY.