Entering the world of cancer

We don’t want to be heading down this road, my siblings and I. It’s way too close to our mother’s passing back in February. More blood deciphering, more hospital time, watching a loved one go through pain and not being able to help. I guess that’s what life is about. You get good times that can easily shift to bad ones.

So what’s this all about? My dad has multiple myeloma cancer that was detected back at the beginning of June. Basically a blood cancer that is incurable. He went to ER yesterday at 11am hoping to get relief from all the compression fractures occurring in his vertebrae and discovered his blood count has dropped from 13 gm/dl to 8 gm/dl. Not good! He saw an oncologist last night after going through an MRI (with Valium not kicking in until AFTER the MRI, bummer!). Unfortunately he probably didn’t quite pick up on what the doctor was trying to tell him. It would be good if he agrees to the bone aspiration so they can positively tell which form of myeloma.  The cancer has been the culprit for weakening his bones. Chemotherapy in pill form is the starting point. To read more about this form of cancer please search The Mayo Clinic for more information. Type multiple myeloma under their search area.

I’m not certain what today will hold except heading back to RiverBend. He’s on the 6th floor and has a view looking west towards the sunset. Kim has taken the day off and is mentally shutting down. I don’t want to go but there is no choice. Back to Eugene again!