Paul Gadzikowski

You may know Thursday night I tweeted:

• Thu, 14:53: Back to the ER for @horseyparalegal: tremors that won't stop and rising pulse.
• Thu, 16:30: Tremors lasted two hours. Hospital keeping @horseyparalegal at least overnight.

Friday afternoon in my wife’s hospital room we were visited by the doctor who’s the director of palliative services for the healthcare system our doctors and hospital are part of. A month ago when she was in the hospital, a couple of reps from that department visited us and suggested it was time to start preparing for when she needed to go into skilled care permanently and switch away from aggressive cancer treatment to keeping her comfortable for the end of her time. The director of the department came to see us Friday to suggest that that time has come.

We were reluctant to hear this so we decided to ask my wife’s physician and her oncologist for their opinion. They each stopped by my wife’s room Monday, coincidentally at the same time, and did concur with what the palliative doctor said.

Right now she’s still in the hospital because they’re still diagnosing and determining treatment for the tremors that put her in the ER last Thursday. But they've asked us to choose a skilled care center tomorrow morning, which she almost certainly won’t be coming home from.

• Wed, 13:53: Whoa hey, Deodato recorded Moonlight Serenade. The things you learn from YouTube.
• Wed, 13:53: @stoplookingup Thanks. I hope your trials start going smoother too.
• Wed, 13:54: @stoplookingup I think of you whenever shots of New Jersey come on CNN.
• Wed, 14:21: @dantheshive I wonder that about all spam. Do people do it because it works, or because it's easy? IS it easy?
• Wed, 15:39: Hero of Three Faces update: a less uncommon name than you think. http://t.co/OoO91Kv #dcu #bsg
• Wed, 17:10: Home from last chemo. Doctor Who reruns on BBCAmerica. The Doctor and Rose. The best medicine @horseyparalegal could ask for.
• Wed, 18:29: @RedneckGaijin When my argument is Lucas has every right to do as he's doing, how is that it's done to only some of his works a rebuttal?
• Wed, 18:41: @RedneckGaijin You may be correct about Lucas' motivation. My position is, he has the right regardless of motivation. Legally and morally.
• Wed, 18:48: Lucas has the right to do what he likes with his story, and suffer the consequences in the market. Same as any storyteller.
• Wed, 19:02: @fourzoas It took me a moment, but I laughed aloud at the trig joke.
• Wed, 20:09: #AKOTAS sketch: I was going to draw the ship, then I remembered it cloaks. http://t.co/HdAeXoQ #webcomics #kingarthur
• Wed, 20:19: The Greek Tithonus. RT @faxpaladin @AKOTAS Who's the Captain Jack surrogate?
• Thu, 09:58: Hero of Three Faces update: my pop is better than your pop. http://t.co/WTKqgll #dcu
• Thu, 11:40: Forget Catwoman. Have you seen Anne Hathaway in glasses?
• Thu, 12:49: @spastasmagoria I'm drawing a Superman/Doctor Who crossover you inspired.

We got out of qtrhorserider's third of four chemo sessions mid-afternoon this time, instead of after dinner as previously. Right now she's curled up in front of the History Channel program on the world's worst airports that we recorded last night because we didn't finish it then.

We've been dealing largely unremarkably with the whole cancer thing since the last chemo day; hence the lack of remarks. We each have had one meltdown day; this stuff is cumulative, and you can be dealing with it just fine and yet have it be building to a point when you need to just check out for a day. I missed work for qtrhorserider's meltdown day, and have added the psychiatrist she sees for her bipolar and anxiety disorders to the oncologists on the list of doctors who authorize my missed workdays under FMLA. She's concerned that I don't have any support I'm taking advantage of. When this all started she checked, and there isn't really a support group for support people for patients. I made an appointment with the social worker in the oncology clinic for this morning while qtrhorserider would be seeing the oncologist before the chemo, because this is among the sorts of thing the social worker is for. But the social worker had misremembered her schedule when she and I spoke, and was in another office today. I'll call to make another appointment for next week sometime, when I don't have job and Yellow Boat rehearsals occupying all my weekday time.

The Hero of Three Faces I drew while at the hospital today (against the new season which will start August 27) was the first one I've drawn since the last chemo day three weeks ago. The shows for The Yellow Boat are this weekend and I'll be ready for it to be over with.

We got out of the second chemo session about as late as we did the first one, and qtrhorserider's uncooperative veins were again the culprit. Two more to go.

Last week Monday she saw the image specialist, then Thursday she went back to get her hair cut and to pick up the wig she ordered. The wig looks good and almost like her own hair (before it was cut), but the weather's really too hot for it and, unless she starts losing more of her own, she looks fine with the cut she has. She has been losing some of her hair, though, and expects to lose more, which is actually a good thing: when you don't lose your hair it means the treatment isn't working.

I got my hair cut Saturday, less in solidarity than because it needed doing. But vainpageantry and ladydragondark did get their hair cut in solidarity. Unfortunately that seems to have freaked the boys a little.

Today during the session I was planning to start drawing the fanfiction story I've been twitting and LJing about for a week or so. Then I decided I didn't want to draw dozens of panels toward a story I don't have an end for. Then I decided the story I have so far would make an okay comic strip, and if I come up with a story ending later I can draw that then. So I rescripted, and got four out of eleven panels drawn.

qtrhorserider had her first chemo session Wednesday (I thought I already blogged this followup, but apparently not), scheduled at 10:00. Originally we were told she'd be in the oncology center for a coupla hours because they prep the meds ahead of time. Then it developed last week that, for the health coverage through my job to pay, she'd have to actually check into the hospital (the oncology people say lots of coverage works this way nowadays) where they don't prep the session till you arrive, so it'd be four or five hours instead of two or three. Then once we arrived they had trouble finding a vein in her right arm. Then the IV in her right arm went bad because we were there long enough to eat lunch. Then they looked in her left arm and it worked out right away, where the veins are better but they'd been trying to avoid that because that's the side where the surgery was. In the end the two-to-three hour actual chemo part of the proceedings didn't start till about 14:00. After dinner was served at 17:00 I left for an hour because the followup meds were called into the pharmacy that's only open till 19:00. But by the time I got back about 18:15 she was done.

Then, because the treatment and/or the followup meds (I find I'm not clear on that part) are slightly caustic and bad for kidneys, we had to set my cellphone alarm for every three hours during the night so she can go to the bathroom, and this goes on for the whole time she's doing chemo. Makes me wonder what they haven't mentioned yet about the radiation therapy after chemo's done.

We had a bad day Thursday that turned out moderately well. The oncology center called to make sure we knew that the primary healthcare coverage we have through my job is an indemnity program and not insurance, and doesn't cover any of her followup therapy. The emotional effect of this was that qtrhorserider didn't go into work and I came home from work late morning, in order to meet early afternoon with the business managers of the oncology center and of the hospital.

In looking over the benefits information we have, however, we were able to identify that they do also include a supplementary insurance policy that will cover at least enough of the costs to make the rest manageable through a payment plan with the hospital; and we gave that information to
the business managers when we went in.

So we had a couple of hours of panic midday followed by a relatively quiet afternoon and evening.

We still decided this week that we need to look for a less expensive place to live.

Chemo starts Wednesday.

Leah saw the surgeon for followup Thursday and the oncologists for therapy plans Friday. The surgeon said she's healing nicely and needn't wear the bandage any more nor come back to see him unless an infection should develop. The chemo oncologist will be seeing her for four sessions 21 days apart starting June 29. After that, about Septemer, the radiation therapy oncologist will be seeing her for sessions five days a week for six weeks.

After I made the most recent journal entry on this subject Wednesday morning and sent the same update to my family in email, I hit a wall myself, and called off work. It was the first chance Leah and I had had for a day together since the surgery anyway, and some needed cartharsises (catharses?) on both our parts were experienced, as validated by the doctors and the social worker Leah spoke with Friday at the oncology center. In general we've found over the years that I react to stress with apathy; my conscious morale has been okay but I've been tired all this week and I remember saying last week that I was tired then too. What we're both realizing this week is that this represents a permanent change in our lives, and that - as Leah saw someone say in the literature we're reading - it's not that she's got cancer, it's that we have.

qtrhorserider is home. She has two doctor appointments for next week and needs to make a third, and scarfgirl has flown in from Chicago for three days, and the power cord for my laptop won't connect inside the port so I dunno how regularly I'll be able to make more updates.

Surgery and recovery done. More detail when I don't have to type it on the Nook.

qtrhorserider's surgery will be Friday morning. First they'll do another quick biopsy in order to decide whether to take the lymph nodes under the near arm in addition to the malignancy that's the main event. They say she'll be overnight at least one night. There'll be a week missed of work and then light duty for about six weeks of recovery (and bar study - such is the universe's timing); and then there'll be about six weeks of radiation therapy.

But that's as bad as the news gets. It's serious, but it's been caught early and the odds of full recovery are great.