Today marks five years since Sharon’s initial seizure. The key
events over the week that followed – an ambulance arriving, the emergency room,
more seizures, surgery at UAB, another emergency room visit, and biopsy results
– are kind of a blur. In some ways, it seems like it all happened twenty years
ago and in other ways it feels like only two weeks has passed.
I haven’t done much with this blog for the last couple of
years but the five year point seems like a good occasion to share a few
thoughts.
- I often get asked “How’s Sharon?” It’s a difficult
question to answer. On the one hand, she is doing quite well. The scans are not
showing signs of active cancer. We are both pretty surprised that Sharon drives
herself around town with confidence. There was a period of time where I had to
watch over her in the shower to make sure she did not fall. To go from that to
driving, shopping, etc. is remarkable. On the other hand, Sharon’s quality of
life is not good. She is in pain, discomfort, or both every day. She doesn’t
sleep well most nights. She can’t travel. She can only be in the sun for a few
minutes. Both of us are of course very thankful that Sharon is still around;
the original prognosis was 3 to 5 years. But life is a very mixed bag for her.
- There have been some huge losses across the five years.
Sharon’s best friend (non-husband division) Ivy Twyman died unexpectedly a few
months ago. Sharon’s radiation oncologist, Wes Glisson, took his own life
before that. Both of us had become close to Wes. Back when Sharon was
struggling mightily and I posted regular updates, Ivy and Wes were probably the
two most dedicated blog readers. Their departures created two huge voids for
Sharon in particular and there’s no way to sugar coat it.
- We’ve known three people who were diagnosed with brain
cancer after Sharon was. All three are gone. This drives home how fortunate we
have been as well as how rapidly the families of those three people had their
hearts broken. Brain cancer is a horrible, awful disease.
- Both of us want to vomit whenever we see one of these “cancer
has taught me so much” stories. Cancer sucks and any silver lining involving
greater enlightenment is beyond minuscule compared with the harm it inflicts. I
think we’ve both become better people along some dimensions, but we would
gladly revert to our previous less-enlightened states if we could.
- Sharon has been extremely blessed/lucky (take your pick
based on your beliefs) to have excellent doctors locally and at UAB. The local
doctors were trained at UAB, so that institution gets double credit. I don’t
think the same quality of care would have been possible in Tallahassee had we
still lived there in 2008. We were blessed/lucky that we moved here before this
medical situation emerged.
In closing, I ran across this article recently and I thought
it offered some great yet simple insights about life in general and life with a
difficult disease:
Unfortunately brain cancer treatment has not advanced to the
point where a doctor is likely to tell Sharon what the man in the article was
told. But we are glad to have made it five years and we try to find something
enjoyable in each day. In Sharon’s case, that usually involves coffee.
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