And we thought 2019 was bad…2020 can just (insert your own expletive)

The last few days have been exceptionally hard for us. Confronting your own mortality at 40 isn’t something that we are prepared to do. Usually you are confronting the mortality of Grandparents, or maybe parents, but not usually your own. Now I have to prepare you that no one is dying immediately, but with the news we received on June 30 we now need to start to prepare for this eventuality.

June was a bit of a rough month for motivation and other things, see previous post for that one, but we were optimistic that we were on the upswing, even though we both knew something wasn’t quite right. Optimism and reality crashed head on with the news we received, and it was a bit of a car wreck.

Okay, spit it out. I know that’s what you are saying as you read this.

The chemotherapy treatment he had been on didn’t work as intended.

Here it is. Dave’s tumor is still growing with at least two new nodules being prominent in the MRI he did recently. This is noticeable, and confirmed, compared to the one done a month prior. This means that the chemotherapy treatment he had been on didn’t work as intended. That the tumor was still growing while doing that treatment.

The growth is impacting his language center, this directly impacts word finding. Something that we knew about when he had surgery in September (2019). We had seen a little impact after surgery, but that seemed to have stabilized and was improving, until it wasn’t. I couldn’t determine if the word finding was from the tumor or other things going on, anxiety, depression, medication, etc.

So what now?

Due to the location of the tumor our surgeon is reluctant to do another surgery at this time. Totally understandable as this one would most definitely impact Dave’s ability to communicate. Radiation is also out of the picture as they don’t want to damage working portions of the brain in that area. Okay – we had some extreme swelling issues with this that have just now stabilized. There is another chemotherapy that might work (30% success rate to slow growth). Yes, that is slow growth, not stop it.

Challenge, this chemotherapy is more intense and can impact energy levels much more than the previous one. Still an oral medication, but much stronger. This could impact quality of life as does anything that causes you to be more tired and uninterested in moving, which causes all sorts of other problems.

HE IS NOT GIVING UP, WE ARE NOT GIVING UP!

Thus, the confrontation of mortality. While we are still focused on Dave beating this, the reality is that he may not, and that reality might come faster than we had hoped. He’s not giving up and is still focused on trying everything that we can to extend life in a way that he can still participate in raising our children and participating in life. We are not giving up!

We appreciate all of the support both present and from a distance. Please continue to send positive energies, prayers, or any healing thoughts our direction. We are happy to chat too if you need to reach out. Message me on any of my platforms, I will respond. As hard as this is talking about it and sharing the emotional load helps, a lot!

I thank those who get earfuls and are still around! You are my rocks! Thank you my rocks – you know who you are.

PS – There was some good news. Dave hasn’t had a seizure in over a month, so that has stabilized and is a positive to focus on too.