A line cast, a hope followedFriday, September 23, 2005
Its been a busy and emotional week here, so its been hard to get a post up on the blog.
I had a great visit with a college friend from Los Angeles Monday which reminded me what friendship is made of, and how easy it is to be with certain people even when ten years elapses between visits. But Wednesday's vet visit with Lydia brought a sad verdict of a cancerous and malignant tumor under her tongue (high likelihood of Squamous Cell Carcinoma) with no real viable treatment option. Either we do surgery to remove the tumor (which apparently doesn't typically heal well and then just grows back in a month or two from the little ganglia the tumor has invaded her jaw with) or we care for her palliatively until the time comes to put her to sleep, which I'm afraid might happen rapidly, as she is having trouble eating and grooming herself.
Most days I take the single parenting thing in stride, but it was very difficult coming home and breaking the news to my kids without another adult to support them- especially since I was still crying from the visit at the vet. But when I tucked my daughter into bed that night, she thanked me for taking care of her when she fell apart even though I was also feeling bad, and said "I know we'll be ok, we're a strong family." This sounds like a moment out of "The Waltons", but it touched me deeply that she could draw onto that only a couple of hours into the grief.
Now my online time is spent researching what if anything I can do to make Lydia more comfortable and possibly extend her life a little without invasive stuff like feeding tubes. I know for many people that doing the surgery or feeding tube if it had a chance of adding a few months of life is worth it. But I told the kids I wasn't willing to let our unwillingness to let go lead to her experiencing unnecessary pain or loss of her core quality of life and dignity. At least when there's no chance of curing her.
Other aggravations came up with the other pets this week too... the current batch of crickets I got to feed the lizards has been extremely LOUD. So loud my son can not sleep in the room with his lizards now. We keep looking for the offender in the cage but so far no luck. At one point the offender in the cage had found soulmates up in our attic and there was a chorus that filled the whole upstairs. And our dog's radio collar which keeps him from escaping (has worked for two years) stopped keeping him from escaping and I had to rush around to upgrade the receiver because he is impossible to corral once out.
I had some sweet spots this week though... the lunch visit that started it out, the extensive time our vet spent both explaining the disease and my options, not to mention his compassion when he returned to find me finally crying after leaving for a short while to fill the perscription. There were some lovely messages of hope and support about my (non)relationship situation, and a nice note from our plant manager this week about some web site work I had done for my job.
So overall although its been pretty sucky this week, I also keep noticing how lucky I am to have the kinds of friends and family I do around me to keep the sucky weeks from being filled with only despair.
I had a great visit with a college friend from Los Angeles Monday which reminded me what friendship is made of, and how easy it is to be with certain people even when ten years elapses between visits. But Wednesday's vet visit with Lydia brought a sad verdict of a cancerous and malignant tumor under her tongue (high likelihood of Squamous Cell Carcinoma) with no real viable treatment option. Either we do surgery to remove the tumor (which apparently doesn't typically heal well and then just grows back in a month or two from the little ganglia the tumor has invaded her jaw with) or we care for her palliatively until the time comes to put her to sleep, which I'm afraid might happen rapidly, as she is having trouble eating and grooming herself.
Most days I take the single parenting thing in stride, but it was very difficult coming home and breaking the news to my kids without another adult to support them- especially since I was still crying from the visit at the vet. But when I tucked my daughter into bed that night, she thanked me for taking care of her when she fell apart even though I was also feeling bad, and said "I know we'll be ok, we're a strong family." This sounds like a moment out of "The Waltons", but it touched me deeply that she could draw onto that only a couple of hours into the grief.
Now my online time is spent researching what if anything I can do to make Lydia more comfortable and possibly extend her life a little without invasive stuff like feeding tubes. I know for many people that doing the surgery or feeding tube if it had a chance of adding a few months of life is worth it. But I told the kids I wasn't willing to let our unwillingness to let go lead to her experiencing unnecessary pain or loss of her core quality of life and dignity. At least when there's no chance of curing her.
Other aggravations came up with the other pets this week too... the current batch of crickets I got to feed the lizards has been extremely LOUD. So loud my son can not sleep in the room with his lizards now. We keep looking for the offender in the cage but so far no luck. At one point the offender in the cage had found soulmates up in our attic and there was a chorus that filled the whole upstairs. And our dog's radio collar which keeps him from escaping (has worked for two years) stopped keeping him from escaping and I had to rush around to upgrade the receiver because he is impossible to corral once out.
I had some sweet spots this week though... the lunch visit that started it out, the extensive time our vet spent both explaining the disease and my options, not to mention his compassion when he returned to find me finally crying after leaving for a short while to fill the perscription. There were some lovely messages of hope and support about my (non)relationship situation, and a nice note from our plant manager this week about some web site work I had done for my job.
So overall although its been pretty sucky this week, I also keep noticing how lucky I am to have the kinds of friends and family I do around me to keep the sucky weeks from being filled with only despair.
