Mom update

Sorry. I know people want to know how Mom is doing  but I've started dating someone! He's kept me up and away from the computer for the last few weeks and you'll forgive me if it's been more fun to think about him than write about my mom (whom I think about all the time anyway).

Here's where we're at:
After Thanksgiving where she was throwing up about 7-9 times day, she lost a ton of weight and was literally starving to death. Her doctors consulted together and decided to put her on an IV at home to get her fluids. So, the home health nurse that comes once a week anyway, started bringing an IV, which helped but it wasn't enough, so they gave her two IV's a day for a while. This was helping, but since she still wasn't getting any nutrition and had dropped to a whopping 106 pounds, the doctors replaced one of the IVs with TPN (basically all your daily nutritional needs in a bag that takes a good 10 hours to drip in). Now, she does TPN at night and an IV in the early afternoon. Because she's attached to her IV pole for about 15 hours a day, Mom has named the thing Betty and accessorized "her" with pretty bows my aunts made for my mom.

Along with all of the nutritional issues, there was also the issue of the chemotherapy not working. She'd had three treatments and nothing had changed (i.e. she was still throwing up and feeling terrible) so they decided to change to a more broad spectrum chemo. Unfortunately due to her lack of nutrition for so long, she was too weak to start and her platelet count was at 8 (in thousands.. it's supposed to be over 100). The Dr refused to do chemo until her platelet count was up to 100. That news was pretty devastating since chemo is the only thing that will kill the cancer that's strangling her intestines. At that point, Mom told me she figures there's a reason for everything and that maybe the extra time between chemo treatments will actually be good since she was so dang weak. Her platelet check was on a Monday and by Friday it was supposed to be up, but it had only gone up to 33. No chemo. On Monday it had dropped to 28. By Friday it was up to about 66, so they gave her a partial treatment of one drug- but positive news in that her platelets were increasing. The following week (last week) her platelets were up to 106 and yesterday they were up to 130.

Yesterday, due to her high platelet count, they decided to just give her the full treatment so she ended up being at the chemo place from 9:30 am until 4:00 pm. Each drip takes a few hours and since she had three of them, she was sitting connected to an IV for a really long time. The good thing is that with the port they installed she doesn't have to worry about her veins handling all the chemicals and things.

This treatment is every three-four weeks but she has to go in weekly to get her external port tubing changed (they installed an IV tube to her chest port to make home IVs easier) and to get a shot to help with her platelets.

She will lose her hair- they said within the next 14 days she'll probably be bald. So sad. She does have a couple of scarves and hats that will become part of her daily accessorizing but I'm sure that will be a strange adjustment for her.

A lot is riding on this round of treatments. She throws everything she eats up because of her intestines not being able to work so if this works, the idea is that she'll be able to keep food down. She's so skinny- she's probably a size 0 now and you can see every vertebrae in her back, even when she's wearing shirts.

This morning I was trying to remember what it was like when we'd go walking for 6 miles and she could beat me when we were hiking. While that was only a few months ago, it feels like forever ago.

We did have a nice Christmas with one of my sisters from Florida here and my brother, sister-in-law and niece up from Provo. The ward was incredible doing The 12 Days of Christmas and dropping off plates of goodies and lots of anti-bacterial hand soaps in fun holiday flavors. I went to church with them on Sunday and it was really quite humbling for me to think about how much their ward has done for my family and how much care/concern they are showing for them. I had to take my mom out into the hall so she could throw up during Sac. Mtg.  and everyone looked so concerned and it truly makes me feel better about not being able to be here all the time knowing there are people looking out for her in the neighborhood.