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17.SEPT.00

Bad News

I uploaded Friday's entry earlier in the day. Friday afternoon brought some bad news, which I've been mulling that over and trying to sort through all weekend. 

Early this year around the time my mother-in-law had her stroke, her son, my brother-in-law, was also diagnosed with esophageal cancer, with some stomach and liver involvement. The prognosis looked pretty bad to us, but he seemed to feel that the docs were somewhat hopeful that chemotherapy might help him. He proceeded with treatment and for a while it seemed that it was helping and we all began to believe that the prognosis was not as bad as first thought. After the first round of chemo was complete, the tumor area in his liver appeared to have disappeared. So he continued treatment with hope. In the end things just did not change significantly, and he started to get sicker from the treatments. He had to be hospitalized last Wednesday. 

Friday his wife called and said that the doctors had talked to them and basically told them that the chemo and radiation was really not helping and that, in effect, there was no hope for his recovery. They suggested that he think about the possibility of stopping the treatment, allow his body heal from that assault as much as possible, and live the next few months with some sort of quality of life. They also said that they would be able to assure him that he would be pain free up until the end.

So he and his wife decided to follow their advice, and basically get his affairs in order and prepare to die. I cannot imagine how it must be for him and her to have to cope with those words from the doctors. Logically it makes sense, but emotionally, it sucks. 

We knew that this would likely be the outcome. But even so, to have someone actually say the facts outright puts the information in a whole new context, and even we have to really regroup and try to make some new sense out of it all for ourselves as well. It's nothing like what he and his wife must be going through, but it's still very sad, depressing and upsetting.

On top of it all, we all agreed not to tell his mother earlier this year because it just seemed as if it would be too much for her to handle coming so soon after her stroke. She has had a difficult recovery. and is in a nursing home, and just now beginning to accept her new life, as it were. She has actually made some good progress in the last month or so. But now we will have to tell her and deal with whatever distress that brings for her as well. Some have suggested that we just never tell her, but I absolutely cannot imagine what it would be like to find out much later that your favorite son had died and no one had even bothered to tell you that he was sick. No, I definitely think it is better to tell and let her have the right to grieve over this, and not keep it from her.

My husband and his brother may not be all that close, but no matter what their relationship, it is his brother and it is really going to be hard. My own brother died completely unexpectedly about 5 years ago. Having experienced that, I really truly do know how it feels. For me there is much that is still difficult, and sometimes unresolved about that loss, so this revives all of those feelings again, too. 

I am just getting sick and tied of dealing with loss, although I suppose I should be grateful that I am still alive shouldn't I? But I have not gotten to that place yet, so between the two of us we are just not all that cheery and motivated this weekend.

So I think I can forgive myself for not updating here yesterday, and here's hoping for some better tomorrows.