Showing posts with label FML. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FML. Show all posts

Friday, October 15, 2010

Overwhelmed

Sometimes I get so overwhelmed I just can't deal with the simplest of tasks.

Holding my girl
The heater in our apartment doesn't work again and we need to tell our landlord ASAP. Normally something like this would not stress me out too much, but with T going through cancer treatment and her immunity being compromised as a result, has me worried that we will spend yet another winter with a heater that works occasionally at best. 

That jerk my landlord hired to buy and install this heater took advantage of her, she got swindled by her "repair man" who got this non returnable heater for her...we call him Mr. Magoo. He's actually a cross between Mr. Magoo and Archie Bunker and never EVER admits he's clueless.

I hope she doesn't use him again and just chooses to buy a good heater herself from sears or where ever? They deliver, they install, and they guarantee their stuff and if something is wrong they will either fix or replace it....Mr. Magoo who is quite frankly a jack ass better not try and take advantage of her again. She and we deserve better.

T has developed a new side effect. The palms of her hands feel as if she burned them on a hot frying pan. They are tender, red, and tingle. This raises new problems. The new chemotherapy she's supposed to start in a week causes the problem she's already having with her hands, which means it could make it worse.....so off to a neurologist we go to find out exactly what is causing this side effect just to make sure.

The neurologist will determine the cause, the oncologist will then have to re-think the type of chemo she can give T....oh and that might mean chemo every single week with extra medicine to try and control the side effects. This means we also have to worry about how accommodating T's work will be with her needing treatment EVERY week.

If that's not enough, we are seeing the surgeon next Thursday late in the afternoon to decide if it's time for surgery yet. If it is, we have to pray her work will accommodate us being as they are not allowing her to even apply for FMLA until November (because she qualified months ago but missed the 5 day window to sign up that they never told her about).....so will she have a job and keep her insurance or not? 

I don't want to put off her surgery until she can sign up for FMLA, if they don’t accommodate us, I'm gonna be pissed....sooooo worried about that.

All this is preventing me from enjoying the bit of happy news we got which is that the chemo is working. The tumors are smaller.....even the nodes in her lungs which we don't know if they are cancer or not have shrunk, SOME of the lymph nodes even disappeared......what the doctors are doing is working, and I don't want T's f#cking job to interfere with that, even though the doctors will work with us either way....

I want to be happy, cry out of frustration, and scream all at once to express a dozen conflicting emotions at once.

This all hit me at once and......I just shut down for a few hours to get my sh!t together before I could do anything.....sounds stupid......silly even.....but I just couldn't deal. My world is out of control and that's really hard for someone like me who tries to think of every possible scenario so I can have a plan for each and every one.

I just want to do some fun things with my girl as much as possible to help us both get through this. She's a tough cookie, my girl......stronger then she thinks she is and while I fear EVERYTHING, I long for the day we can look back on all this as a distant memory.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Ever feel like you just got punched in the stomach?

Saw oncologist with the wife today.....they can't tell if the nodes in her lungs or the lesions in her liver are cancer or not because they are too small to diagnose or biopsy.....which means the doctor can't tell us if my girl is terminal or not.

They do say that even if they are cancer the chemo and radiation will "treat" them as well. My hope is that her treatment will obliterate them, but we have to watch them.

Wholly crap!

Part of me is happy they are treatable and part of me is devastated that the doctor can't say definitively that she is NOT terminal......scared....angry....and so many emotions in my head and heart i could not begin to explain how i feel, think, am.

Chemo starts 8/27/2010....2 weeks

Thursday, August 12, 2010

I Need a Miracle!

I'm so stressed and worried about so many things right now with regard to the wife's cancer, treatment, her job, her insurance, how she is handling everything.

I'm beside myself and feel quite paralyzed today.....although I am doing all I can I fear it won't be enough to make this as easy and stress free for her as something like this can be........LOL....i know, I'm nuts.

This is hard enough already without her work and other things making it worse. They say money can't buy happiness, but it can buy her health and well being and our sanity.......unfortunately, I lost the lottery again....LOL

If ever I've needed a miracle, it's now. Not sure how much more I can endure
Lost a baby
Dog died
Mother-in-law died
Wife has cancer
....and the entire world seems hell bent on making this as hard/impossible to handle and deal with as possible.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Some Answers....More Questions....more tests

Overwhelmed to say the least.

The Cancer in her Right breast and right lymph nodes we knew about. There is also cancer in the lymph nodes near her collar bone on the right ride.

The scary unknowns right now are a few nodes in one of her lungs, which are suspicious for cancer and lesions on her liver which may or may not be anything......Ultrasound and Pet Scan to rule those out.

Oh and a possible cyst on her ovary which is a nothing.

Either way the treatment will be the same.....

  • Tests 1st
  • Consult with Oncologist
  • Port-o-cath surgically implanted over her good breast to administer the chemo and stuff next week.
  • Chemo for 4 to 6 months
  • Surgery to remove just the big lump, the lymph nodes under her arm, and reconstruction all at once.
  • Radiation 5 days a week for 6 weeks after that to make sure it's gone.

Her hair will probably fall out after the 2nd treatment so we may be going for the GI Jane hair cut sooner rather then later....eyebrows and eyelashes may or may not fall out as well.

Oddly I'm able to keep it together in her presence, as always i will fall apart tomorrow when she leaves for work....but I have so much to do.

My unemployment may or may not continue after I call them tomorrow, although I think it will continue until I find a job or it runs out in July of next summer....thankfully we have many friends and family who can pick up and take her to doctors if/when I am working.

So stressed out I can hardly deal with every day life, but I must. I wish I had the money to be able to stay home and take care of her for this whole next year, but unless lotto comes out (LOL) or Bill Gates becomes my new best friend.....such is life.