Refractional Darkness

Mom seems to have come through the surgery OK, and the docs were able to give us the breakdown of most of what they know earlier today, though I guess full biopsy results may not be available until Monday or something like that.
She’s been a bit groggy and a little “out of it” all day, but it’s expected she will probably be able to go home either sometime tomorrow or Monday.

The neurosurgeon took my dad & me aside and gave us what was basically an onslaught of bad news.

Verified it is a very aggressive brain cancer.
Because of the location, they can’t get to it to remove it (“it’s in the worst place it could possibly be in” were the words used).
It is hoped that through radiation therapy and possibly some chemo they will be able to halt further growth.
This will not by any means bring her back to her former self – it will just help hold it back from getting worse.
For a while. Maybe a year. Maybe a little more. Maybe a little less.

Dad’s talking about how he has no idea how he’s going to be able to take care of her when they live in a two story house and the bedrooms and bathroom are up two flights of stairs.
Not sure what to tell him – I really feel just as helpless as he does right now.

So the full body PET scan they did came up with nothing, so the doctors have decided that they need to go in and do some exploratory surgery Saturday morning.

Even this “exploratory” surgery is going to be risky – in order to get to what they’re trying to “explore” they still have to somehow dig down and get to the center underside of her brain against the spinal column… without hurting her further in the process.

Assuming it goes OK, they’re still expecting to have to keep her for a number of days afterwards both so she can recover and so that they can keep her for observation to make sure she doesn’t start brain hemorrhaging, etc.

Dad has asked if LabGirl and I can watch their dog during what will likely be him spending pretty much day and night at the hospital by her side.
I have to clear it with LabGirl, and figure out some arrangements with the cat (as both the dog and the cat have a mean streak and I could easily see them getting into it), but I’m sure she’ll be fine with it.

The sadder side of me is of course thinking that if there are any complications at all, Saturday morning may be the last chance I get to see my mom.
But let’s just pray that’s not the case.

So a couple of days ago I was getting ready for work, and all of a sudden I had this MASSIVE headache, and noticed this thingie in my vision that was sort of like the after-image you get after looking into a bright light…. except it wasn’t going away.

I took a crapload of Tylenol and went to work, did some Googling and from my reading it sounded like I was probably having an ocular migraine. I’m not usually a migraine kind of guy, the last time I had one was so long ago I don’t even remember when it was, and the visual thing has never happened, but whatever.
According to the descriptions, it’s harmless, and the visual obsurity usually goes away pretty quickly.
Ya.

Then yesterday morning, the “blind spot” is still there. Hasn’t moved. Hasn’t faded. Hasn’t reduced in size. Something told me I needed to get this thing checked out in case it’s something a bit more serious than what I was self-diagnosing through Google.

So I make a lunch hour appointment with a local eye specialist, and I end up being there for about 2 hours having a crapload of tests run while the doc kept looking at things and saying she didn’t see anything that looked like it was wrong.
Finally they put me on this funky machine that does a visual scan of the macula (the part of the retina most responsible for your central vision)… and they found the the problem.
Showing me the image, she pointed out where I had somehow blown through a layer of tissue, which was now bubbling up and had a layer of fluid under it – causing the big “spot” in the vision of my right eye.

She said when it happens it’s usually in men in my age group, and that it seems to usually be stress related – then asking if I was under an unusual level of stress lately (to which I simply answered yes, rather than ranting about how noooooo dealing with working 10 hours a day six days a week, and mother dying from brain cancer, and adjusting to newly moving in with my girlfriend, all at the same time, wasn’t an unusual amount of stress at alllll).

She then said there wasn’t much that could be done for it other than to just give it time to heal naturally, which can take up to a few months.
Also scheduled me for an appointment with a retina specialist just to double check.

So… I now get to work on a computer all day with this damned huge spot in the middle of the vision of my right eye for who knows how long. Great.

And I suspect I’ll probably blow out another one once I get the bill for them to tell me there’s nothing I can do – they had to do a crapload of tests to get to that conclusion.

LabGirl and I stopped by for a visit Sunday afternoon.
Things appear to be progressing in the wrong direction.
She basically tries to not stand up or walk unless she absolutely has to.
And, very sadly, she appears to have completely lost the use of her left eye. She mentioned the doctors have told her that even if they are able to operate on the tumor (which still looks unlikely) she’ll likely never get it back – it seems that once the brain shuts down a vision sense like that it’s next to impossible to turn it back on again, regardless of how much has healed.
She got a couple of calls from relatives while we were there, and just from her describing to them what’s going on, LabGirl had to leave the room because she had started to break down into tears.

Amazing, but Mom actually seems to be the strongest of all of us right now as she goes through all this.

She had a PET scan yesterday. The docs have been unable to even do a biopsy on this brain tumor because it’s so hard to get to, so they’re doing a full body scan actually hoping that this thing has spread somewhere else, so that they can sample it and do a biopsy so they can have a better idea what exactly they’re dealing with. Probably a few days before much comes from it.

Although I’m not really in a writing mood I figured I should at least mention this – my mom’s in pretty bad shape right now… to the point where I am very afraid she may not be here with us on this earth much longer.

The symptoms progressed very quickly – a couple of weeks or so ago she started having trouble with her vision, seeing double. She saw an ophthalmologist who told her that from what he could tell her eyes were perfectly fine, so whatever was causing her double vision, it didn’t appear to be her eyes themselves.
So she scheduled an MRI.

The results of the MRI were, to say the least, not good.
She has some sort of growth, possibly a tumor, at the base of the brain and against the spinal cord, at an area called the pons – it’s jacking with her senses and her symptoms are getting worse – only a couple of weeks later, and now her left eye will no longer move right of center, she can’t walk straight, and her balance is messed up.

Although she’s got lots of doctor visits lined up, so far they are not at all optimistic, and say due to the location (which is pretty much smack dab bottom-center of her brain) it may not be operable – and even if it is (which appears to be unlikely) they’re not even sure what the mass even is yet – though one possibility may be some sort of moved recurrence of the breast cancer that she fought against so hard about a decade ago and thought she had beaten.

My dad is so worried he’s hardly eating, and I’m not ashamed to say I broke down in tears for a good part of the night after he told me about it, and continue to try not to think about it too much as I go through my day just so I can function.

I’ve never lost anyone close to me before, and definitely not a family member. I mean, I of course knew the time would come eventually, but now… she’s only in her mid 60’s.

And I keep thinking sad thoughts like… what if she passes on before I get married? What if she never gets to meet my future kids? What is dad going to do without her? I mean, like probably most couple that have been together for decades, their whole lives revolve around each other.

We were never the closest of families – we’re not were never the give-hugs-and-tell-everybody-you-love-em type family, and really we never needed to be – my parents have always shown how much they care through their actions if not necessarily their words. Always there if I needed them, even if I always tried my best not to have to burden them.

I work in a building that’s right next door to a Catholic diocese building. They have a statue of Christ out front with arms outstretched overlooking a pond and a grove of trees.
Yesterday during my break I took a sit under a tree, meditated for a short while, and then prayed for the first time in a very, very long time. I can only hope it was so out of place that somebody actually listened.

It’s October 10th. Not even halfway into October yet.
Just looked outside.
It is SNOWING.

That SUCKS!

LabGirl and her brother have recently decided that the time has come to put down their family dog of the last 12+ years.

She’s having a bit of a rough time with it, and I’m actually very saddened by it myself, and I honestly barely know the dog as well as they do.

He’s a large huskie, who still likes to play with you when he can muster up the energy, has a unique personality and will actually “converse” with you sometimes by giving little howls in response to your asking him questions, he’s soft & fuzzie, and just overall seems like a great dog.

LabGirl actually took on the responsibility of caring for him back around Spring, when her brother (who’s dog it really is) and his wife had just gotten incredibly frustrated at his issues and were thinking of putting him down at that time.
At the time he had been having incontinence issues, and would just let his bowels loose randomly throughout the house. As a result the dog ended up being locked up in the basement there nearly 24/7 and had become pretty miserable.

After LabGirl offered to take on the challenge of taking care of him he seemed to make marked improvement – he seemed, frankly, much happier.
He did still have some incontinence problems but they weren’t constant or anything, and LabGirl tried to help as much as possible by making sure he spent a good deal of time outdoors and by using urine-catcher wraps whenever he was indoors – as she doesn’t have carpet in her house most accidents weren’t a big deal.

Unfortunately though things have deteriorated over the last few weeks. The incontinence has gotten much worse, to the point where urine flows pretty much constantly, like a leaky faucet, and any time she leaves the house she prepares herself to have to deal with a “present” on the floor when she comes back.

She had been seriously considering making him a purely outside-kept dog, to the point where we had started piecing together plans to make a large shelter for him.
But – this was thought over, and the conclusion was come to that although this may allow him to stay around a bit longer – he’d almost certainly be miserable.

He’s always been a very indoors, pampered dog. Yeah, he’s a huskie, but he’s a huskie that’s never really had to deal with the cold except for short trips outside to take care of his business.
And to go from that to having to stay outside during the winter here, even if he does have shelter?
Plus he’s got a pretty bad case of arthritis in his hind legs, which he doesn’t whine about or anything but that you can tell is hurting him – whenever he stands up his hind legs shake from lack of strength, he has a very hard time simply standing up or sitting down, and as a result spends most of his time just laying on the ground not wanting to move any more than he has to.
I can only imagine the winter air would just horribly aggravate it.

So, it was decided that it was time – better to have him put to sleep while he still feels somewhat loved by those in the home rather than after months of feeling miserable and rejected after being banished to the back yard.

She and her brother have made an appointment to take him in on Thursday.

I saw this tonight on PostSecret and it brought a few tears to my eyes:

He’s really a lovable dog, and considering I’ve gotten misty-eyed and I barely even know him, I can hardly even imagine what it’ll be like for her.

We’ve both got the week off of work this week, but I’m pretty much assigning the last few days of the week to knowing I may need to be around for her.

Working on an idea for the weekly audio trivia segment that the Slice of SciFi podcast does. It’s fun stuff trying to identify movies and tv shows from various sound clips, usually all falling into a specific theme.

I don’t think anybody has done one yet that’s just the engine noises from famous sci-fi space ships. I think that could be interesting – not to mention a solid test for sci-fi geeks – can you identify spaceships just from the noise they make?

I’m currently downloading some software that based on forums should be able to rip audio tracks from video – which is a start.
Then just to get the video of the right ships.
I mean stuff like the Millenium Falcon and the Enterprise are obvious.
And I was thinking of adding a 5-second clip of complete silence and labeling it “Serenity” just cuz it’d be fun.
But I’m not sure what other ones to add – the Nostromo maybe?

Hmm… Maybe the Heart of Gold.
Or the Gunstar from The Last Starfighter…
Maybe the saucers from Earth vs the Flying Saucers could be fun…
Or a Cylon raider?

Anybody know of any other movie or tv space ships that have an identifiable sound?

So friday I got a call from my doc’s office.

I’ve already been taking Pravastatin for a little over a year now, due to high cholesterol.
Since I started on that my cholesterol has been fairly well in check, but I have an eventual goal of getting myself to the point where I can get off of it – I don’t like being on any meds more involved than a daily multi-vitamin… and frankly I sometimes have my doubts about even those.
Add on my Zyrtec-D (or the generic equivalent that I buy now) and starting monday I’ll be up to a minimum of 4 pills a day.

Anyway, they’re starting me on Trilipix as of tomorrow, which is a drug that’s taken along with the statin in order to control not only the cholesterol levels, but now also the triglyceride levels, which apparently were through the roof, nearly twice what they should be.

The level being that high basically means that I have been eating *way* too much fatty food.
I mean, it doesn’t seem like I’ve been going crazy with the grease or anything, but I guess over the last year I’ve been a little more free about eating burgers and other fried foods.

Unfortunately this means I’m probably going to have to make some serious changes in my diet and be more careful about what I order when I go out to get something.
And probably eat even more chicken. Sorry, I like chicken and all, but I get sooo sick of it after a little while.