- Ian will die of brain cancer.
- I will be a widow.
- The children will lose their father.
These are the FACTS (barring being hit by a bus).
It's what we do with these facts that matters.
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This weekend we had to visit the hospital; Ian accidentally stopped taking one of his medications and thing went downhill quickly. Lots of swelling to lots of ill effect.
After an overnight on steroids, he's back to "normal."
And then we saw the oncologist.
The tumor, which is "cystic" (meaning like a jellyfish, not a golf ball), is still moving. Some of the movement COULD be due to all of the swelling happening up there. Some could be straight-out growth. It's nebulous and hard to measure, because as I said above, it's gooshy. We do know that it is aggressive. It's not in a place they can operate (it's too close to ventricles and such).
What I know is the doctor said things like, "extend your life as much as possible," and "keep you comfortable," and "I'm very worried."
Ian has started a treatment called Avastin which will lessen swelling. It's delivered by IV, every three weeks. He will also remain on Temodar, the pill-form chemotherapy, with 5 days on, 20 days off, etcetc.
Radiation treatment is over. The effects of THAT have not necessarily been realized, in terms of tumor shrinking ... and the radiation itself can cause swelling. So you can see ... SWELLING. Is an issue.
The doctor refuses to give a timeline here. He will tell us what treatment we'll do, and when, but won't give a prognosis. That's ok ... how would we hold him to it, long or short? but the point is, we don't know how much time we have.
None of us do, really.
It's just that for us, that time is less.
