Day 2 - The nightmare begins. Saddle up for a long ride

 The next morning (May 21st), I drove to the hospital not knowing what to expect. I had done some research that night on brain tumors, so I was already anxious and frazzled - I had seen the word glioblastoma associated with stage 4 cancer and read the bad news about survivability, which is pretty much 0 chance. When I entered her room in the Intensive Care ward, there she was, wide awake, still on the respirator, surrounded by nurses. There were daggers coming out of her eyes - I could see she was REALLY PISSED about the ventilator, and wanted the tube out immediately. The nurses said they needed to wait for the neurologist to come by to approve it, but Jan was not happy about waiting. I thought at one point that she was trying to pull it out, but she slapped my hand and then made a writing movement. I got her a pen and a little whiteboard, and she was able to write out that she just needed to reposition it. Which the nurses did. Eventually, they did remove the tube and quite frankly, she was doing remarkably well - she could speak normally and move around. She had lost some peripheral vision on one side, but the other eye was fine. It was hard to believe that anything major was wrong with her.

 A neurologist appeared and went through the diagnosis, explaining where the tumor was, what the impact was right now, and our options - he said the next step was to do brain surgery to get a biopsy sample, and to resection the turmor. This is standard procedure where the surgeon removes as much of the cancer cells as possible without damaging the good portions of the brain. Given my panic state, I did not even consider looking elsewhere to have this surgery done - the physicians all seemed competent, and the surgeon we met was compassionate, with a solid background. Jan was already in the hospital, and it seemed logical to just keep her there a few more days and get this done. For the post-op treatment, I was already looking elsewhere, since that was critical depending on what the biopsy reported indicated. So, Jan was stuck in the hospital for a few days, until her surgery on Thursday. She was still a bit wobbly, and slept a lot, but she was out of bed and bored….always a good sign with her.

This day was the starting point for what turned out to be 11 months of non-stop, high speed motion for me. Without close friends and family close by, the burden of researching treatment, cancer centers, clinical trials….everything associated with the treatment and care for a terrible disease, became my personal challenge. I had to protect Jan as best as I could while finding the best possible care for her. 

Since this is a blog, not a book (although it start out like one), I’ll be switching off the chronological order of things after the next post. I wanted to set the basis for what I’ll be writing and venting about - there are so many side stories associated with this journey through hell - treatments, the ups and down of a terminal cancer, some good stories here and there, my wife’s rapid decline at the end, and then switching into everything about negotiating grief, and life as a single person. This really is all about me for the most part - I need a place to vent, even if I’m the only one reading this. But I’ll try to keep this informative as well, and if anyone has had similar experiences, feel free to comment.


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