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Showing posts with the label acinar carcinoma

Moving On Through Grief

Mom left this earth on February 12, 2025. I woke up that morning to get Myles ready for school and Mom was cold. She went to meet God sometime between 2:30 am and 6:30 am. I called The Boy’s dad to come get him and take him to school as we had agreed on prior to that. I shut her bedroom doors and got him together and out the door and then I called hospice.  It was such a RELIEF knowing that she was finally gone to God. In her final days awake, my Mom begged me to kill her. She begged me to let her die. She was crying in pain even through the pain medication. Thankfully, when we got close, I was able to tell her how much I loved her and administer morphine. That kept her out of pain, asleep, and floating in her own world.  When she lost consciousness it was about 4-5 days after that when she went to meet God. One of the surreal things was that although she was unconscious, her eyes were open. Hospice assured me that was common. But it broke my heart to see her normally bright b...

Caregiving For A Parent

Mom was diagnosed with stage 4 acinar carcinoma pancreatic cancer a while ago. Acinar carcinoma only affects about 4% of the population with pancan. Even after treatment at Cancer Treatment Centers of America, they had only seen a few cases and even with treatment her tumor was growing. She had the whipple in 2019. Fast forward to today, she’s been living with me and my 8 year old son (The Boy) for about 2 years now and it’s been back and forth from Northern Alabama to Atlanta every other week. That stopped when they said the treatment wasn’t working.  They sent Mom home. She did great for a while, but she’s slowly getting weaker and weaker and after a fall last night we made the decision that she won’t be moving around the house anymore. Thank God for Southern Beacon hospice. We’ve got a wonderful nurse and everything we need so she can stay in the bed. Yall, she’s so tiny. I can see every ligament on her poor little body. This woman has had cancer like 4 times. She’s a damn troop...

Medical Oncology and the It Depends Factor

I didn't update yesterday because it was such a long day. We had a few hours of The New Patient Experience, saw gastroenterology, pulmonology. Mom is having a biopsy via endoscopy ultrasound on Friday.  She did really well for being at the Center all day. What I'm not telling you is we got ourselves a nap between the appointments and the Experience.   Today, I'll be honest. I'm nearing panic attack right now and we're not even at the Center yet. I took one of my anxiety meds, which hasn't happened in a while. I could fall back to sleep so I'm sure Mom could too. The pulmonologist was happy the fluid in her lungs seems to be decreasing. Mom 11 happy too. She gained  1 1/4 lbs yesterday. She's been eating nonstop so hopefully we'll see more weight gain.  Later..... This is fucking scary.  All of it. Trying to get things scheduled in a way that addresses the acinar carcinoma swiftly but also being patient and not Basically Momma has a very rare cancer c...