Second chemo treatment

Dad went yesterday (Tuesday) for more blood work and his second chemo treatment. The blood work was more of the same, I think, and the chemo went well. As of a few minutes ago, when I talked to him, he was not yet sick. He said he felt pretty good, actually. Let's pray that the side effects from this second treatment are minimal! He fared pretty well after the first treatment, with only about two days of real sickness, and I'd like to see it go even better for him this time.

I keep reminding him that sickness, baldness, and tiredness mean that the chemo is doing its job--killing all fast-growing cells--but I doubt that really helps when you feel like you're going to puke your guts out. I long for the day when we can treat cancer in a less barbaric, more targeted way (i.e., designing chemo to target only cancer cells and not ALL cells that divide quickly--red blood cells, hair and skin cells, and stomach lining cells), but I am thankful that we have a treatment at all. A mere fifty years ago, all forms of cancer were virtual death sentences. Look how far we've come! The most common form of childhood cancer, acute lymphocytic leukemia, now has a cure rate of something like 90%, whereas in the 1950s, it had a cure rate of around 3-5%. Wow! Let's pray that researchers all over the world will soon make the same sort of progress with more difficult-to-treat cancers, like Dad's.

Please keep praying for Dad--for him to be free of side effects, for his continued great attitude, for his energy levels. Also, please continue to pray for Mom. She has so much on her right now. She called an ambulance for my grandmother earlier today, so Mom-o is once again in the hospital (I don't know any more than that--she was having shortness of breath). It's a lot to shoulder all at once, and there is only so much that others can do to help.

When It Rains, It Pours

The other day, Mom took her cat, Smokey, into the vet because he had a hurt foot. She dropped them off and told them to go ahead and neuter him while they were at it, so they suggested that they do some blood work before the surgery to ensure she wasn't wasting money. Sure enough, a little while later, the vet called and said that Smokey had the feline version of AIDS. Fabulous. The good news is that the cat could possibly live several years with this disease. The bad news is that in the meantime, it will just be one thing after another--bladder infections, respiratory infections, etc. Mom realized that she couldn't possibly handle that on top of everything with Dad (and with him being an outside cat, he'd just be spreading the disease in the meantime), so she made the decision to put him down.

Long story short, Laura and I just returned from the vet's office, where we attempted to give Mom some bit of moral support as the cat was put to sleep. It was really super sad. Please add Mom to your prayer list. I know it may seem like a trite thing--obviously, no one places a cat on the same level as a human being, but it was really difficult for Mom to handle this on top of everything else.

On a lighter note, all the guys in our family did something really neat for Dad this weekend. As I noted in a previous post, Dad's hair started falling out on Christmas Eve. After a day or two of that, Dad got a little sick of being covered in hair, so he asked Laura to come shave it off for him. So she did. Eric had already shaved his head in a show of solidarity, and that put a little idea in my brother's head. What if all the guys did it?

So Friday night, my husband Mark, my brother Danny, and my brother-in-law Greg joined Eric in the Great Head Shave of '08. Even neighbor Tim got in on the act, although he didn't go so far as to take the razor blade to it after the barber was done with the clippers. We wanted it to be a surprise for Dad, and boy, was it! Here's a picture of the great look on his face as all the guys walked in to surprise him.

And here's one of all five guys with Dad.

And here's one of the five guys posing outside with their new 'dos. Mark was such a good sport about it. He is not a fan of having a shaved head (brings back bad memories of basic training, I believe...), but he cheerfully succumbed to the peer pressure to make Dad smile--and smile he did!

And the obligatory Austin Powers "Dr. Evil" shot...

Christmas Eve at Laura's

We had our annual Christmas Eve chili supper at Laura's as usual, and after spending the morning at the hospital getting an IV of medication to ease his nausea, Dad felt well enough to attend, which thrilled us all. The bad news? His hair began to fall out on Christmas Eve morning, so we had to prepare ourselves for that. It wasn't as bad as we all feared (Mom made it sound very, very bad on the phone!), but you could definitely tell it was getting patchy. He wore one of his new "chemosabe" shirts that I had made for him. Here is a picture of him in his shirt and with less hair than he normally has!

He enjoyed watching the grandkids play. Here he is with Luke on his lap. Luke has just been learning to clap, so Dad was encouraging him.

Laura gave Mom and Dad an ornament that states, "Believe." Here's a picture of them after opening it.

We tried REALLY hard to get a shot of Mom and Dad with the grandkids, but, well....not everyone (KATE!) was cooperating. This was as good as it got, unfortunately. Still, they're all there, so that's something, right? I will post more later, but I wanted to get these few pictures posted for now. Merry Christmas!

Blood work and staging

Dad went back for more blood work yesterday. I'll be honest--I can't remember all of what Mom told me, but the blood work was much the same, I think. Nothing too earth-shattering in either direction. They did give him another IV, like last week.

The thing I really wanted to update you on was this--Mom and Dad asked the nurse about the stage of the cancer, since that was something they had not been told previously. They were told that it is considered to be stage IV, since it has metastasized to the liver. They also think it has more than likely spread elsewhere, although it isn't really showing up as such or causing complications as of yet. This isn't really unexpected, but it's still something of a shock to actually hear it confirmed.

Realism vs. Pessimism

I stopped by my parents' house briefly this afternoon for the first time in several days, and I've pretty much been a wreck since. I had Steve Kirkpatrick (of Steve Kirkpatrick Designs here in Cleveland) embroider a couple of sweatshirts for Dad for Christmas--they say "chemosabe" on them. He saw some dude in the chemo infusion room wearing one, and he loved it, so Mom suggested that as a Christmas gift. So today, the shirts were ready and I went ahead and dropped them off with Dad because he has been so cold lately, and making him wait three more days just so I could wrap them up and put them under a tree seemed like a stupid reason for him to continue being cold.

I walked in the door, and instead of lying or sitting in his recliner, he was lying on the couch buried in blankets and honestly, he looked half-dead. He barely opened his eyes when I walked in--just enough to smile at the shirts.

Friends...there is a fine line between being pessimistic and being realistic. We have all been trying very hard to be realistic while at the same time not losing hope. I say that so that you will understand that what I am going to say next is not being said in a spirit of pessimism but of realism. We essentially feel at this point that the six to twelve month time frame we were given is much too optimistic, based on what we are seeing from Dad.

We will know more tomorrow after test results, and even more next Tuesday after he meets with the nurse practitioner (his oncologist will be out of town), and I will update you again then. As for now, please continue to pray--that if a miracle is not in the cards, that at least his suffering will be minimal.

More good news

Dad seemed to have a really good day today! When I called this afternoon and he answered the phone, he sounded like the old dad we all know and love! He and Mom actually got up and went to church this morning, which he's not had the strength to do in awhile. He is still having trouble working up an appetite, but we're working on that.

He said he is feeling much better--not 100%, but much better than he has been. It just gives me so much hope to see how much he's improved after only one chemo treatment. It does give me hope that God might deliver a miracle. I'm not trying to be naive or in denial about our chances here, but I don't want to write Daddy off as a goner before we give God a chance to do His work!

Yesterday, Mark, Dan, Kate, and I ate lunch at Ryan's with Mom, Dad, Shim, Terry (that's Tim and Sherry to the rest of y'all), and Doris. We were super-excited that Dad felt well enough to try to go eat. You could tell that he was having a hard time eating, and he definitely didn't do the damage that we're used to seeing from him, but I thought he did okay--he ate part of a salad, some chicken, and about half of his piece of steak. After we were done, Mark and I took the kids over to Mom and Dad's, put Kate down in their crib for her nap, and Mark and Dan and I went outside and spent the afternoon doing Mom and Dad's yard. We had a lot of fun, and it definitely helped my spirits to be outside in the nice weather and doing something to help my parents. You could tell, though, that it made Dad feel badly that we had to do his yard work for him, which I told him was stupid. Because, you know...it's not like he's never done anything for me in my life. Right?

Keep praying!

A Good Day!

Finally! I have something to report other than gloom and doom! :) I stopped by Mom and Dad's house this afternoon--the first time I've stopped by since last weekend. I have been avoiding Dad like the plague since he had his first chemo, because when you have two little ones, you just never know what sort of microbes you're carrying with you, and that's just not a risk we can take right now. At any rate, I stopped by briefly this afternoon and Dad looked...okay! So I asked him how today had been, and he said, "Actually, when I got up this morning, I felt pretty daggum good!" He said the day had gone downhill somewhat since he had been up, but overall, things were much better. And he sounded a lot perkier, that's for sure! It made me feel so joyous to hear him say that today was a better day. He said that yesterday and the day before were definitely the two worst days. I am cautiously optimistic that perhaps the worst of the nausea for this round of chemo is behind him.

Let's pray that he has a nice respite until his next round of chemo on December 30. Let's also pray that he handles the next round as chemo as well as (or even better than!) he handled this round. I am not one to speak lightly of nausea and vomiting (anyone who knows me knows I speak the truth!), but based upon some of the horror stories I have heard about chemo, it seems that things went as well as we could ask for!

Please continue to lift up Mom and Dad in your prayers. I am so proud of them (yes, I know I have stated this before...I'm just reiterating!). As we Baptists like to say, God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good! We are feeling your prayers, and we are so thankful for them.

Chemo treatment #1

Dad had his first chemo infusion yesterday, and it went as well as can be expected. I called about every five minutes until bedtime last night, asking how he was doing, and the answer was the same every time--fine. This morning, I asked Mom again and again...she said he was doing fine. Later today, she did tell me that he had thrown up once, but when I spoke to him this evening, I gathered that he was doing okay. He said that there had been about three times that the nausea got pretty bad, but judging from everything I have heard from others who have gone through chemo, what he was describing didn't sound that incredibly terrible.

Please continue to pray that he will handle the chemo well, and that he and Mom will both continue to have great attitudes, as they have thus far. I am so proud of both of them for their attitudes. Your prayers are being felt and we are so blessed to have such amazing friends and family!

Love,
Holly

Weekend Update (but unfortunately...not funny like SNL).

This weekend was a tough one. Dad has been feeling badly, but Saturday and Sunday were the worst I have seen so far. He is just so weak, and most of that stems from being unable to eat, I think. I don't think it's the cancer that's making him so weak at this point--it's the lack of food. I feel so helpless, but he did give me an opportunity to feel less so. My sister Tina makes this amazing seven layer Mexican dip, and she introduced it to all of us at the beach house a few years ago. Laura and I immediately got the recipe from her, and we've been making it ever since. Dad remembered it and said he might be able to work up an interest in eating that, so I got all the ingredients together and made it yesterday and took it over there last night. When I got there he had barely eaten anything all day--part of an Ensure drink and a few odd bites here and there. I don't know if he ate any of the dip or not, but it felt wonderful to be able to just DO something to help.

Danny came up this weekend so they could watch the SEC championship game together. (Danny's a rabid Florida fan and Dad's always been a 'Bama fan). It is ALWAYS a good weekend when Danny is here, so it helped to have him around. He was shocked at the difference in Dad's appearance from the last time he saw Dad (Destin in mid-October) to now. Darrell and Teresa also came up Saturday night, and they had not seen him in three months, since the first weekend in September. They were dumbfounded.

Wayne's funeral was Saturday, and none of us could bring ourselves to go. I didn't make my final decision until an hour or so before (I was very much afraid I would end up regretting it if I didn't go), but in the end...I just couldn't do it. It felt terrible that there was no Williams family representation there, but I have no doubt that Peggy, Nikki, and Chad understand, probably better than anyone else, that we just couldn't deal with that right now. Dealing with a cancer fatality after you've just gotten the terminal cancer diagnosis yourself is...difficult, to say the least.

There was a bright spot in all of this. I got an email from my dear old friend Sydney this weekend. She is a pharmacist and she actually works in the hospital pharmacy at Memorial, where Dad will get his chemotherapy infusions. When she got my email about Dad, she said she is not the chemo pharmacist on Tuesday, but she will be at work, and offered to do whatever she can--eat lunch with Mom, whatever. I know it will help Mom so much to see a friendly and familiar face. Sydney and I went to school together from elementary school until graduation, so Mom has known her for years and it will do her good to have Sydney to ask questions of on Tuesday.

I am still trying to figure out how to process all of this. This is my first time dealing with anything of this magnitude in my life and my brain is almost in overload. I know I need to have a good cry, but honestly...I hate crying. I really do. You get a headache and then you can't breathe and your eyes are all dry and swollen afterward, and it really just sucks. I know it will happen eventually, but I keep trying to put it off. Thankfully, Dad is very matter-of-fact and easy to talk to, so I told him straight up last night that I will be lugging a camera and/or video camera in there pretty much every time I have the kids over. I told him, "I'm not trying to kill you prematurely here, but if this goes south, I need everything I can for the kids." He agreed completely.

Danny stayed with us this weekend and he and I stayed up late Saturday night talking. It felt great to just sit and talk with him. I hated to see him go Sunday morning, but he will be back for Christmas, and he is bringing Stef and Bridget with him.

Mark has been amazing through all this, but he doesn't know what to say or do. So Saturday night, while we were all watching the game, he pulled on his backpack leaf blower and blew all the leaves out of Mom and Dad's yard. I think it helped him to feel like he was doing something useful for Dad.

I have jumped from topic to topic this morning, and for that I apologize. So the last thing I will do is ask for prayer.

Pray:
-that Dad will be able to eat more and that the nausea will ease up some.
-that his first chemo treatment tomorrow will go well and that he will have minimal side effects (he is worried about the nausea--he's had quite enough of that lately already ).
-for Mom as she takes care of both Dad and her mother.
-for my siblings that are far away and feel helpless to do anything.

Thanks for reading and praying.

Numb

Dad saw the oncologist this morning. I still do not know the full details of everything that was said (Mom gave it to me in a nutshell), so I will post more if there is more to add. The long and short of it is this: it is very much as I feared. The doctor said that barring an intervention from the Lord, this form of cancer is always terminal. Dad will have his first chemo treatment on Tuesday, followed by a second treatment 22 days later. The chemo is a "quality of life" issue, rather than an attempt at a cure, from what I understand. It helps in approximately 30% of cases. Those odds aren't encouraging, but it is what it is. There was good news to be had, and that is that Dad's liver is apparently functioning very well right now, despite the malignant lesions on it.

Mom and Dad did ask Dr. Johnson (the oncologist) about the worst-case scenario. He said that we may be looking at six to twelve months. In a way, that is actually a little bit of a relief, because Dad has been feeling SO badly lately that we were afraid they'd go in and the doctor would say he had only weeks left. Still, six to twelve months is still an incredibly short period of time. I am very much in shock and quite numb at this point. I feel emotionally drained and all I really want to do is crawl in bed for awhile. I am worried about Dad, about Mom, and about Emma and Dan. Kate and Luke are too young to know anything (that in itself is both sad and a blessing), but the time will come when Laura and I will have to explain this to Emma and Dan and I truly can't even fathom how I will do that. I don't want Dad to suffer, and I don't want to watch him go through chemo and lose his hair. I don't want to watch him waste away and turn yellow.

In short, I was never naive enough to think that my father would live forever, but I always thought I would have more time than this. Your prayers are still appreciated. Please pray for comfort for Dad, for wisdom for his doctor, and for peace and wisdom for Laura and me as we try to explain this to our kids. I worry about my other siblings' kids as well, but they are mostly older and more able to understand, and of course, since they all live far away, they only see Dad once or twice a year. I don't know if that matters, since I've never dealt with this kind of thing before, but I can't imagine that their attachment to him would be as strong as if they saw him practically every day, as Emma and Dan do.

Dad is hoping to feel well enough after chemo to take a trip (presumably to Louisiana). I don't know when that will be, but I am hoping to be able to go, too. Every moment is now precious.

Please continue to pray, and I will update more when I can.

Oncologist appointment update

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

This isn't a major update, but I do want to let you all know that Dad's appointment with the oncologist has been moved up to this coming Friday morning. This is all in thanks to Dad's urologist, who looked at the biopsy report and said he'd make some calls. I am relieved, because no matter the news, I would rather just know than take part in this ridiculous waiting game again.

Last night was another tough night because Wayne Billingsley finally lost his decade-plus-long battle with cancer. He was such a fighter. He was told just after last Christmas that it was time to call in Hospice, but he was so strong--he rallied again and again. He was out and about doing things and seeing friends, and that was so encouraging. He had taken a serious turn for the worse in the past month, though, and I am glad he doesn't have to suffer anymore. It was so hard to see him like that, and I know it was so emotionally draining for Peggy, Nikki, and Chad. Now he is at peace, and maybe his family can be, too, now that he is not just lingering here in a pain-riddled shell. It is so difficult, though, to have a close family friend die of cancer when you've just had your own father diagnosed with the disease.

It has been a long time since I really got on my knees before God, but I did that last night after receiving the news about Wayne. I praised God for His timing, for taking Wayne now and ending his suffering, I praised Him that Wayne is home getting an amazing Homecoming with his now perfect and cancer-free body, and I prayed earnestly for Peggy, Nikki, and Chad in their time of mourning, and of course, I prayed for my own father and his doctors, and that I will not have to see him suffer in the same way.

It seems that cancer dominates my every thought in the past week or so, even down to having dreams about receiving chemotherapy and waking up nauseated. I am so blessed that I have not had to deal with things like this before, but it is challenging having to face the idea of my parents and their friends growing older and passing.

That is all for now. I will update again after Dad sees Dr. Johnson.

Hard day

Monday, December 1, 2008

Today was a hard day for me.

So far, I have done an outstanding (in my opinion) job of holding it all together. I got the news last Tuesday at lunch, and couldn't lose it because I had to go back to my kids (students). After school, I couldn't lose it because I had to go pick up my children and didn't want to scare them by crying in front of them. I haven't had much of a chance to really grieve over the news.

Today, as the designated "science person" in my family, I did some research on cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer, which is what the biopsy report indicated that Dad probably has).

The research is bleak.

I am not going into details here. If you so desire to know, you can Google it yourself. Suffice it to say that I finally had my "freak out" today and have been crying on and off all afternoon (but still, not in front of my kids, because I remember being a child and I know there is nothing more terrifying to a child than seeing a parent cry or be out of control).

I dreamed about chemo last night. It was the last dream I had before I woke up, and when I did wake up, I was nauseated, like I had just gotten chemo and was sick. Guess it's right there in my subconscious more than I thought...

I can't write any more right now. More later.

Update on Dad

Friday, November 28, 2008

Cancer. It's getting easier to say, although it still sounds odd being in the same sentence with my dad. I have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love from my amazing friends and I love and cherish each of you. Thank you for your love and concern.

We don't know any more than we did, but we do have an appointment with the oncologist. After gathering recommendations from friends, my parents chose Dr. Johnson in Chattanooga (yes, we are doctor snobs, as my husband says, and pretty much go to Chattanooga for everything) as my father's oncologist. The only caveat? They couldn't get an appointment until December 15th. I was absolutely livid (along with everyone else...except Dad) that there would be an almost three-week wait between the diagnosis and the appointment with the specialist, but Dad has been assured that that is actually a fairly normal wait time and he wants us to quit freaking out about it.

Dad's attitude about this whole thing is just amazing. He has been very nonchalant and matter-of-fact about it. "It is what it is," he keeps saying. That was his mantra in the excruciating period of time between when we first knew there were lesions on his liver and the time that we actually got the diagnosis. He will be a great patient. Physically, he feels lousy, of course. The main symptom (other than general malaise) that he has been having is a persistent nausea. The nausea isn't so bad that it causes vomiting or anything like that, but he has a hard time working up an interest in eating. If you know my dad, you know that he has pretty much always been thin as a rail, and he has lost 20 or 30 pounds so far, just due to his lack of appetite. The method of choice so far in dealing with the nausea has been Phenergan (a miracle drug, in my opinion!), but it hasn't done much for him, so his gastroenterologist gave him a prescription for Zofran, which is actually a drug that chemo patients commonly use to control nausea and vomiting. He said it hadn't done much for him when he took the first one, but I haven't asked him about it since.

We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner last night. Mark, Dan, Kate, Laura, Eric, Luke, Emma, and I all gathered at Mom and Dad's for ham, fried chicken, Mom's delicious broccoli casserole, and a bunch of other yumminess. It was a good time of fellowship.

Above all, we just continue to ask for prayer--prayer that Dad will remain in good spirits, that his energy level will increase, that the nausea will taper off, and that the oncologist will have the wisdom to choose the best course of treatment for him.

I will keep you posted as things develop.

There is never a good time for bad news.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008
There is never a good time for bad news.
Let me start by saying that I have led what many would call a charmed life. Past my grandfather's death (which I experienced at age four), I have had nothing whatsoever in my life that could be labeled as "trying" or "heartbreaking." Until today.

Today we got the results of my dad's liver biopsy, which he had last Thursday. It came back exactly as I expected--cancer. There, I said it. The big "C."

As of now, we know virtually nothing. We don't know where it originates (although it looks like it is neither lung nor colorectal). The biopsy results seem to point to an origination point in the bile ducts rather than the liver itself, but again, we don't know anything for certain yet.

I have been waiting until we had a definite diagnosis to do my freak-out, but now, even though I have a definite diagnosis, I still can't freak out until I have more information.

I don't even know how to handle this information. As I said, I have nothing in my life to which to compare this. I got the news at lunch today (at work) surrounded by five colleagues, all of whom knew exactly what was happening. There's nothing like getting a cancer diagnosis with five pairs of eyes watching you. I did a lot of shaking, but not a lot of crying, because I was afraid if I lost it, I wouldn't be able to get it together again in time to go back to class. So I am still holding it all in, barely keeping it together.

I guess all I can do at this point is ask for prayer. So please keep my mom and dad in your prayers--my dad as he deals with each step in this process and my mom as she endeavors to take care of both my father and her mother.