Mom Has A Medical Problem

Uncle Frank , my cousin Kimberly and I had to rush out to Arizona because my mother had to have emergency surgery to repair a hernia that was affecting her colon, and when they performed the surgery, they discovered that she has colon cancer and had to remove about 40mm of the colon and then perform a colostomy. Things didn't look too good. Tests have shown that the cancer has spread to her liver and since it has invaded both lobes of the liver, it is inoperable.

Uncle Frank, Kim and I had to show up to help out in dealing with the surgeon, the oncologist, the pulmonary specialist and the cardiologist and then explain what was going on to Mom, Dad and the family. When we finally got Mom home, we had to set up her oxygen pump system (and keep the kids away from her for a bit so she could rest) while Uncle Frank worked on her diet counseling to help stabilize her diabetes. The oncologist said that after about 3-4 weeks, she will have a PET scan as a baseline, then he will start working on her chemotherapy.

According to the oncologist, the prognosis for recovery from colon cancer at the stage she has is about as generalized as he could make it. It is not curable, the best one could hope for is to fight the spread to a stand-still with a continuous onslaught of medication but it will always be there.

He said the average life expectancy for a person with this disease who remains untreated is about one year. If treated, the average lifespan is about two years. Of course, these are the averages, some do worse, some do better. He did note that it is possible that she could go longer than this but it would be a direct result of stumbling upon the chemo-drug cocktail that works specifically in her instance and that she takes extraordinary measures to keep her diet and diabetes in check. Otherwise, things won't work out as we would prefer.

Here is a picture of Dad, May (a friend of Mom's) and Uncle Frank.

And here is another view that shows Uncle Jimmy and his wife (sitting down) with Kimberly in the foreground.

At the time of this writing, Mom is at home, looks fairly good and seems to be doing pretty well under the circumstances. She drags her 50 foot oxygen hose all over the house and sometimes she doesn't even need it. Unfortunately though, she doesn't seem to grasp the depth of her problem and is acting as if this is no big deal, so this is our main concern. If she takes this issue too lightly, then she might start slacking off in her treatments.