Surgery and Beyond

What a week this has been! But let's get to the important stuff right away. Brenda had her surgery on Monday. It was a very systematic biopsy of sites in her sinus cavity and up in the cribaform (SP?) bone where they found that nodule during her last surgery. They did find a pocket of cancer cells about the size of a dime in diameter and about the thickness of about 3 to 4 dimes in that bone above her sigmoid sinus and her brain. It's not in an easy place but it can be treated and that's the good news. It's not bone cancer, but the neuro-endocrine cancer she had that's in the bone...there is a difference.

Brenda stayed the night just to make sure she was OK from the procedure...she did wonderfully! On her discharge paperwork they said to get in touch with  Dr. Youseff (radiation oncologist) ASAP for the radiation to start. Since we were right there where that will be happening, we stopped by the office to make that appointment. This is where things went to shit.

When we first saw Dr. Youseff he said that they would send away to MD Anderson in Houston for the files and necessary documents they would need from her last treatment. Well the office told us that they had requested it on several occasions and have received nothing and that we can't make an appointment until Dr. Youseff gets those files and reviews them. I about lost my mind! No one called us to tell us they were having problems. In true Brenda fashion...she remained calm while I was ready to take a plane to Houston and get all the records myself. So we get home and Brenda calls M D Anderson only to be told that they never received any request...Now I'm really pissed. This is the love of my life who has a time bomb growing in her head and we can't get folks to do their job and get some paperwork! REALLY? Brenda and I got so frustrated with their lack of followup that we just had to have a couple beers!

So it was about 7:30 on Wednesday when I got a call from my mothers assisted living facility that said she had fainted that morning and was unresponsive for a time but finally did wake up. They called the paramedics and she was taken to the local hospital. She is 95 so it's never a good thing when this happens. I zoomed over there to see what was up and found her sitting in her hospital bed in the ER, wide awake and very alert. I could breathe again! It appears that she became extremely dehydrated...she's on water pills to bleed off excess water...she has congestive heart failure, her blood pressure dropped and she fainted. The good news is that the care team was with her at the time to give her her morning meds and they caught her as she went down so she didn't hurt herself. They did a full workup but her kidneys took a hit because she got too dry and so she had to stay the night. I went back to her apartment and got some clothes for her release and her coloring books so she tolerated the stay watching TV and coloring.

While that was going on, Brenda actually made some headway with the paperwork problem. We got Venessa from Dr. Youseff's office to actually take over the responsibility of getting the records and apparently they should have them today. The images that he wanted could be e-mailed so I guess I don't have to fly to Houston right now. But we still can't make the appointment until the doc reads all the material which makes no sense to me. Shouldn't you make the appointment...it's never the next day...and then he can review the stuff in the time before we actually come in? Some of this stuff I just don't understand.

So our house remodel is almost done. We actually get to move in this weekend. We're meeting our designer there today to go over things and they are supposed to finish the plumbing install and the carpet install today which means we can move furniture back in. We gave away our old couch and chair so we also have to go look for some new stuff...that's always fun.

So I think that covers this weeks episode of "As Our World Turns Upside Down!!" We so appreciate your good thoughts and prayers...please keep them coming. We are also accepting BEER! LOL! Love to you all...

Nurse Dee

PS: Mom got out yesterday and is doing fine...I just have to get her a bunch of follow-up visits with her doctors.