Today’s cancer cure

Just finished making this delicious looking concoction for Mum. It’s Essiac tea, nurse Caisse’s original formula. The instructions said to brew it for 10 minutes, stir, cool overnight in the fridge, stir, boil again for 10 minutes, then strain. Mmmmm! I feel a bit witchy now.

Mum update

Here’s the latest update.

We went to the oncologist on Wednesday. Really nice man. His son goes to the same school as Duncan and Berry. He was compassionate, kind and funny. Well, not exactly funny, but warm.

The news isn’t good. Mum has a lot of masses in her lungs and liver that shouldn’t be there. He clearly explained the chest x-ray, telling us what is normal (lots of black space) and what isn’t (all the white bits that look like cotton balls). In her liver, she has a 13 cm mass.

In terms of prognosis, she has a guesstimate of 3 to 6 months until either her liver or lungs fail. Chemotherapy is the only conventional treatment available and that may prolong her life, on average, for an additional 3 to 6 months. However, the treatment lasts 4 months and comes with a host of unpleasant side effects. There is no known cure.

The current plan is to reduce her symptoms (coughing, shortness of breath, difficulty sleeping) so that she can feel as well as she can, for as long as she can. We’re also upgrading her diet to include lots of nutritionally supportive foods — flax seed oil, chlorella smoothies, fresh vegetable juices.

The oncologist mentioned a naturopathic physician he’s worked with. Mum has an appointment with her on June 20. Hopefully she can recommend the right supplements, dosages and diet to support her body’s own healing ability. We’ve got lots of people praying for us, too (which is very appreciated — thank you).

I seem to be compartmentalizing things. There are the things I need to do to make sure Mum has what she needs (insurance, medications, people to clean, make juice, help watch kids, etc.). There are things I need to do to make sure I’m OK (exercise, sleep enough, eat good food, keep my own doctor/therapy appointments).

At times it’s overwhelming but, so far, I’m so busy I’m handling it OK. It’s the quiet times when it gets hard. And I know there will, eventually, be harder times ahead.

But today, I have my Mum. Today is what we have.

Mum’s diagnosis

Mum was diagnosed with liver cancer on Friday (June 3, 2011). She had been getting care through Volunteers in Medicine and seeing a primary care physician there.

A couple of weeks ago, she was recovering from a cold/virus of some kind and continued to have symptoms, like shortness of breath, and made an appointment to see her doctor that week. She’d also had a couple of attacks of severe pain in her abdomen and it felt hard and swollen.

Her doctor sent her for a chest x-ray and did some blood work. She got the results of the x-ray last Tuesday (May 31) – it showed multiple nodules in her lungs. So her doctor send her for a CT scan of her abdomen on Thursday (June 2). The CT scan showed several nodules in her abdomen, an enlarged gallbladder and a large nodule/tumor in her liver.

Her primary care doctor is 100% certain that it’s cancer. More blood work shows that it originated in her liver and has spread to her lungs.

She’s been referred to an oncologist at Willamette Valley Cancer Institute and has an appointment on Wednesday (June 8).

My mum has cancer

People are being so kind.

I do wish,though, I had some sort of respectable answer for “How are you doing?” I don’t know how I’m doing. I’m half-here, half-heartbroken. Still stunned. Sad. An inch away from tears. Lost. Torn. Do I stay hopeful and believe in healing miracles? I feel guilty if I don’t.

They say (they = the online resources I’ve been reading) that young children Duncan and Berry’s age believe in magical thinking. They believe that what they think and do makes things happen. Well, so do a lot of us adults, especially the ones who have a metaphysical bent.

Mum’s cancer is in her liver and lungs. There’s lots of it. She looks quite normal on the outside, but the scans of her innards tell another story. It’s still mind boggling to me.

Here’s Mum and Berry after the kids’ ballet recital on Saturday.

Snow Day

Working from home with 4 excited kids in the house is challenging. But how often do we get snow days in mild Eugene?

It was the perfect snow day. Big, fluffy flakes of sticky snow fell on and off all morning. The world was white and pretty. Then a small horde of children built a fort and had a terrific snowball fight.

They came in cold, with sopping wet gloves and bottoms. I stripped them off, they warmed up, and moved onto art projects, workbooks and Minecraft. The sun came out and melted all the snow away.

Work today was something of a relief. The ordinariness of a quiet office. Concentrating amidst laughter and negotiation of kiddos, getting them dressed for the cold and staying occupied throughout the day was a nice change, though.

What we’ve been doing for the past month

I think I’ll start every post with: sorry I haven’t been blogging lately! It can be my default disclaimer. Seriously, I barely have time to remember to upload photos into my Picasa gallery, let alone talk about them. Adam does a much better job of posting family news on www.familyofadam.com. He does videos, too.

Ballet classes
Duncan and Berry are taking ballet. Choosing their outfits was lots of fun (for them).

Berry wore hers all day.

Berry continues to love ballet and Nanny reports that she smiles widely through the entire class. Duncan…he says he’s getting bored because they do the same thing over and over again. He’s got 8 more weeks of class, though. Last week he seemed to enjoy more, even sporting a few smiles. We’ll see how this week (and the next 7) go. Then he can try soccer or t-ball or something.

He’s got some good dance moves, though, and makes an awfully cute boy ballerina.

Girly ears
The next biggest thing that happened in January is that Berry got her ears pierced. She has a pair of clip on earrings that were just squishing and bruising her ears, yet she insisted on wearing them for the sake of beauty. So I told her when she was ready, she could get her ears pierced and wear real earrings. Within a few weeks, she decided she was ready, so off we went to the mall.

She’s a tough cookie. She said she’d be brave and wouldn’t cry. All she did is blink.

Then we went to the movie theatre, got a giant tub of popcorn and watched Tangled. Both kiddos sat through it perfectly. Within a week, of course, Emma got her ears pierced, too.

I don’t have the rest of January’s photos uploaded yet. They involve Dr. Princess Barbie Berry wrapping me up in bandages, hiking up Spencer’s Butte, doing science with Duncan, dressing up in a bunny suit to tour surgery areas at the hospital, kids hugging each other and watching movies in the basement. You can expect those in another six weeks or so…

Our December adventures

December has been quite an adventure — full of Christmas preparations and excitement.

In early December, we drove out to Grandma Sue’s abandoned Christmas tree farm. Trees were growing wild! After a trek through the beautiful spooky forest, we picked out a tree. First, we had to check out all the woods had to offer, including this stream.

I love getting the kids out in nature. The trees have such a pull for me, that I want them to develop that same connection.

That said, we did bring Adam and a saw to cut one down and take it home…

After wandering for what probably felt like miles, I chose a tree. The kids watched as Adam cut it down.

I don’t seem to have photos of it, but it was huge. We took the top half, plus some branches to make a wreath for the front door. We tied it to the roof of the mini van, while the kids got warm inside — while rocking out to music from Glee – took it home and propped it up in the corner of the dining room.

You can watch the movie of the event here:

Once it was ready to decorate, I had many willing “helpful” hands. We eventually got all of the ornaments on. By all, I mean ALL, regardless of free tree branches to hang them from. What started out as a lovely, fresh tree cut right from the forest turned into a very well decorated, brightly lit Christmas creation.

You can see part of it behind Princess Berry.

A few days, later, Advent presents from Gramma arrived and Duncan and Berry very much enjoyed opening one each morning when they woke up.

I neglected to take a photo every day, but you get the idea.

The Sunday before Christmas, we went to church. So did Santa. Berry seemed very comfortable in his lap.

She wanted some odd combination of robot toys that all worked together. Duncan, however, just wanted a bell from Santa’s sleigh (we’ve read the Polar Express).

I’m not sure what Emma asked for. And the pic is on Adam’s phone.

I made egg nog, snowball cookies (pictured below) and mini apple pies. All gluten-free and delicious, even if some of the snow balls were more like snow mounds.

Mysterious boxes kept arriving at our door every day. Lots and lots of presents were wrapped from all corners of the globe. On Christmas Eve they made their way down the stairs to the tree. We had to move the table.

And, finally, on Christmas morning, little children work up bright and early to begin unwrapping them. They Skyped with Kevin to unwrap presents from him, Aunt Karen, Uncle Jonny, Gramma and Papa Rog. They Skyped with Uncle Christopher and Arthur to unwrap their presents. They waited for Nanny to arrive so they could unwrap presents with her. And, finally, Emma and Sam arrived home and more presents were unwrapped.

I fell asleep, exhausted, at 2:30 pm while children frolicked and played. Helping Santa is hard.

Snow invechr Duncan wiv hobz a lit (Snow adventure, Duncan with Hobbes)

Qyout osum fun!

Winter school concert

I am a proud mummy.

Last week, Duncan and Berry had their school winter concert. As they go to the same school for part of the time, they both got to be up on stage together.

I was running late from an after-work meeting, so hurried to the school auditorium/cafeteria, dropping my phone with the almost-dead battery on the way. People were still milling about and children were lining up getting ready to get on stage. Just in time!

I’m not sure how to describe the incredible cuteness of your 3-year-old child, standing proudly on stage in her sparkly red dress, singing out loud above everyone else. If you hear a voice standing out above all others in this video — it’s Berry.

Duncan did a great job, too. His dancing and motions are quite animated and somehow he remembered the words do the 3-minute-long song about pigs.

Here it is, for your delight and enjoyment. (Note: my cell phone battery was about out, so I didn’t record the first 2 clips — my mum did. The last 2 are from my phone, which are steadier, but the sound isn’t as good. Sorry.)

A visit with Santa

I’ve never stood in line at the mall, trying to get the elusive Santa shot. It just never mattered that much and I didn’t really want to chance the screaming.

As it turns out, apparently I didn’t need to worry about that. Berry had quite the snuggle with Santa at church yesterday. She asked for a robot dog connected to a cat connected to a Barbie that moved. Good luck, Santa!