When Cancer Strikes

I can never really gauge how I will feel after a day of doctors visits. It is so hard to drive him around anywhere right now, ever bump in the road is total agony for him. Amazing how that can exhaust me. I feel so selfish to even consider my state of being sometimes. I just have to remind myself that if I get ill, who will take care of him.

How did we get here?

In November, we were planning our upcoming holiday, arguing over what presents to buy our son, discussing when my husband would finally finish having the flooring installed as I was tired of concrete living-room floors. Normal, everyday silly things, that seem so important. Boring even, I have been known to complain about how boring things were. Rarely a vacation, he refused to take the time off. Thank gods for that now, I’ll explain that later. That really was a sore spot, we even separated a couple times because of it.

I want our quiet, boring life back now.

One day he walked in early from work, his back hurt so bad he couldn’t continue at work. This scared me. He never left work from being sick, well very very rarely. This man was a workaholic….no, more like the most responsible hardworking man I have ever known. He had seen his primary care Doc already and had been given vicodine and told to go to the ER if the pain got worse. No tests ordered, nothing, just go home you are fine. Things went down from there. We did go to the ER, twice over the next couple of weeks, then back to the primary for followup, primary never ordered a test, the hospital ran an MRI each time showing nothing wrong, Xrays, CATScans, the only thing that was found finally was the possibility of gall stones.

We were sent to a surgeon to have the gall bladder removed, and told that would do it, he would be fine. All the while my husbands pain is steadily increasing, he continued to get weaker and weaker, and became totally bed ridden. This did not seem to be of any concern to the primary, who looked rather amused the last visit at his office. I was shocked at the smile on his face when my husband howled in agony in his office.

Shame on you Dr. William C. Beck. Shame on you.

Waiting for the surgeon appointment I insisted my husband see my doctor and switch to him as primary. My doctor promptly sent us to the neurologist. The Surgeon could not believe what he saw, and was adamant that something else was wrong, there was no way gallstones could possibly cause the pain, weakness, confusion and weight loss we were seeing. More tests, which did conclude that yes he had gallstones. Surgeon was still skeptical that this was the real problem but thank Gods for him, he pushed ahead to have surgery done, and told me he would peek around while inside, he wanted to visually inspect the pancreas, which he suspected was the culprit, and thought that was where cancer would be found.

The gall bladder surgery was scheduled pretty quickly, within a week, just after the neurologist appointment. Which turned out to be quite upsetting, while he did order another MRI, he nearly held up the surgery to get the results of the MRI. I was still holding out hope that the surgeon was totally wrong and gall bladder surgery would be the cure to my husbands agony.

Long story less long. The surgeon, not finding anything wrong with the pancreas, ordered more tests and called in an oncologist. Saving my husbands life. Complications developed almost immediately. Calcium levels in the blood life threateningly high, I think this is what caused them to look for myeloma.

It turns out, he has had this disease for quite a long time now. No telling how long he suffered with a back ache before he finally just couldn’t take it any longer. If left in Dr. William C. Becks totally incapable hands, I believe my husband would have died. He nearly did after surgery.

Multiple Myeloma, stage three. Is that a death sentence? Yes to a degree. There is no cure, treatment, but no cure. Will treatment help him now? At this stage? I don’t know. It seems to me his pain is getting worse not better, weakness is no better now than before. Thank gods for morphine, atleast it is some relief, not much though. The best I can see for us is perhaps two years more, maybe ten years more. One day, if not soon, eventually, I will lose him to this disease.

If he does not make remission, I cannot help but blame his former primary care doctor. Who, by the way, had an office assitant or nurse make a call to the new primary doctors office, and informed the RECEPTIONIST, yes not a nurse or medical person, but the front desk receptionist, that my husband had nothing wrong with him and he was merely seeking pain drugs. This is another very long post, perhaps for tomorrow, but definately for another day.

So, I begin our story of survival and fear and despair and anger and love and every other emotion that is humanly possible. That was just today.