The End of Days - Losing your soul-mate to glioblastoma

A few days after my wife passed, I began sorting through her clothes in the master closet and bedroom dresser drawers, with the help of my cousin. We wound up packing up about 15 boxes. It hurt doing this - I loved the way Jan dressed, and she had so many beautiful outfits. But I just need to clear out the upstairs - I did not want to be like a lot of widowers who keep everything for years. I gave it all away to charity. After that, I pretty much held off on give away, except for items that she did not care about, or which I know she would have been happy to give to certain friends - her tennis rackets for example. Some items I sold and regretted - a pair of sunglasses we bought and she hardly ever wore. And a tagine - I knew I would never use it again, but Jan loved it. The woman I sold it to cooked with hers all the time, but it broke, and she was so happy to find another one. After selling that, I decided to be more selective once again - I really felt like I was giving pieces of h...

Because of all the damage the tumor, surgery and radiation inflicts on the brain, steroids become a necessity to reduce swelling, and thus suppress some of the effects you get from the swelling such memory, speech and vision issues. Jan was on high dosage during the radiaton and chemo, which was reduced towards the end of treatment. Unfortunately, the steroid was also suppressing a very nasty reaction to the chemotherapy drug. As we approached the end of treatment, we noticed a few patches of a rash on her arms. This continued to spread across her entire body…everywhere. And then, during a holiday weekend, she was not feeling well either, so we wound up with a nightmare experience in the UC Davis Emergency Room. As with most E/R, it became a Hotel California experience - you can check out anytime you want, but never leave. The end result was putting her back on steroids, and also getting a steroid ointment which I had to apply over her body twice a day. It worked fortunately. She also...

  My wife’s second surgery was in the last week of June, a few days before her 72nd birthday. It went well - the surgeon said they were able to remove as much as of the tumor as possible, and Jan came out in good shape. It’s amazing how quickly you recover from what used to require long stays in the hospital. Jan spent all of two nights there, before they discharged her. She was in better shape this time around, and best of all, she had continuous care and contact from the surgical and oncology staff now. That was a relief compared to her previous experience. I had someone to call now if anything went wrong. The next steps after surgery for glioblastoma, is 6 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy, which in theory, could push the cancer into something close to remission. The question is when it will start to spread again. If the cells have the various gene markers which make them more susceptible to treatment, it could be 2 years, or even 5 years (very low %). With the wildtype, it i...

  Once Jan was released from the hospital, my life was focused on finding the best possible cancer center to continue Jan’s treatment. At this point, we did not have the results from the biopsy, nor did we even have a doctor to help with Jan’s post-op issues. Mercy left us hanging in the breeze - Jan just had brain surgery and we had no clue who to call when she was feeling unwell, We could not even get an appointment with someone to remove her stitches.  The main focus though was finding somewhere/somone to handle the real treatment - that would be resection surgery followed by radiation and chemotherapy. With the help of a former neighbor who happened to be an oncologist with contacts at UC Davis, I followed his recommendations in applying to 3 different hospitals - one local (UC Davis) and two in the Bay Area (Stanford and UC SanFrancisco). All three are excellent, but of course, Stanford and UCSF would require a lot of travel. I was able to make contact with all three pri...

 When my wife’s struggle with glioblastoma came to an end, one of my dearest cousins showed up at my door, and was with me when my wife passed, and then stayed with me for the following week. She, along with my friends who stayed with the until she arrived, probably save my life. A pastor from my church asked me what I would have done if I did not have that support the first week - I told her I probably would have cried myself into a fatal heart attack.  At any rate, what I meant to talk about in this post, was the strange new habits I’ve acquired since I’ve been forced into being a single person. My cousin has been single for quite some time, through divorces from bad marriages. She’s very happy with her life, has many friends and travels frequently to be with family. But one thing I noticed in the week she was here, is that she talks constantly to herself. Apparently,  when you live alone, you eventually let what runs through your mind, leak out through talking. Everyon...

 “ All the lonely people Where do they all belong? Father Mackenziе Writing the words of a sermon That no one will hеar no one comes near” Switching gears completely for a moment, being a widower has been a strange and awful experience. It’s the club no one wants to be a member of. I’ll be posting a lot more on what my life has been like since Jan passed away. But one of my more immediate issues has been loneliness - I’m referring to it as the Eleanor Rigby Syndrome. During Jan’s decline as the cancer advanced, I spent a great deal of my time responding to text messages and phone calls from friends and family, checking in on how Jan was doing, and also how I was handling the stress. Everyone knew that I was running around at 100mph, trying to do everything possible for her. Once Jan passed, that flood of well wishers has dried up to a small trickle of close friends, who check in on me at regular intervals. These are the true friends. We also had some very close friends who have not...