Well aren't I the blogger queen.  I just found this and my gosh, nearly three years from the  beginning of this and the time has gone by so quickly.

Those months were the nightmare everyone has but unless you have lived through it very closely with a cancer victim, it is nearly impossible to describe.  We have all known so many people who succumb to this awful disease but unless you live through it first had, you really have no idea...

He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a the first week of November, 2011 and we walked in to the cancer center for the first time on our 38th wedding anniversary.  His 57th birthday was spent in the hospital hooked to tubes and dealing with the ravages of chemicals that are supposed to kill the cancer.  For him though, there wasn't even a miracle that was going to fix it.  We just wanted to delay the inevitable so he could have another Christmas with us, and more importantly, meet the new grandchild scheduled to arrive the week before Christmas.

The rest is now a blur.  I do know he would not have survived to Christmas had we not done the chemo and radiation.  His liver was literally consumed with cancer and it had moved to the bones, kidneys, lymph nodes and lungs.  All that...and it was just at the original diagnosis.

The first round of chemo was to be done in the hospital and took five days.  They installed a port and a feed tube.  Then he was sent home for me to deal with things I'd never even heard of, let alone expected to have to understand and manage.  Medicines were so complicated, I ended up making a spread sheet and posted it on the kitchen cupboard, inside the door where we didn't have to look at it all the time.  It was the lifeline to sorting pills into the little boxes.  Those little boxes that are supposed to be for old grannies, not my vital, healthy husband.

The week of in-hospital chemo ended up being too harsh on his body and they immediately moved to plan B...a different drug that could be administered at the cancer center weekly with no hospital stays.  It was easier on us, but still Plan B. The good news in all this was the fact that our daughter was scheduled for a C--section in one hospital and those 5-day chemo deals were at another hospital across town.  We tried to get them in the same place but we ran in to doctors who couldn't go to the other hospital.  So in the end, he was home and we were able to greet our grandchild #7 in the traditional fashion.

She is a beautiful little one, now almost three years old, and I think some of her grandpa's spunk was given to her.  One of of now eight grandchildren, and she's the only one with curly hair...like his.  One out of eight grand children who has that Irish temper, just like his.  No worries...she'll learn to tame it.  He did.

Christmas was joyous and sad all at the same time.  We knew it would likely be his last, and yet we all tried hard not to think about it.

January came and towards the end of the month we were told the chemo had not done it's job to stop the growth and so it was ended.    We were switched from the hospital home care nurses to the palliative care nurses of Hospice.    All of them were angels with invisible wings.

St. Patrick's Day came and we had a big gathering.  Almost everyone in his family was there.  Brothers from out of town, nieces and nephews, with only one or two missing from his great big family.  It was a wonderful event, though he was weakening, and we all knew his time was near.

A few days after that, we had to have him admitted to a nursing home that had a cancer wing.  It was hard for him and devastating for me that I couldn't keep up his care, but the affects of the cancer on the liver messed up his blood and gave him such confusion he nearly stepped over the railing to the basement instead of taking the steps.  At that point, we knew it was time.

The nursing home was a place that I can only describe as being Heaven on our side of the pearly gates.  They were able to keep his meds adjusted so he was much better off than he would have been at home.  I brought his dog down to visit once and it was their last visit.  He was there at the nursing home 10 days before his last breath.

Our family gathered.  The caretaking ended just as suddenly as it began.

The Beginning

I knew something was wrong,  In the back of my mind, I could tell after 38 years of marriage, that something wasn't right.  I worried about some kind of skin cancer.  I knew that can sneak up on a person and be deadly.  He had always loved working out in the yard and shed the shirt as soon as the sun was warm enough.  His skin was so tanned, his tan lines never really go away.  Our generation knows about a Coppertone Tan, but his came without help.  And of course, our generation also spent hours in the sun without protection of sunscreen because it hadn't been invented until we became adults.  So in August of 2011, I dragged us both to the dermatologist only to find neither of us had anything to be concerned about.  He measured a sunspot on my cheek for future reference, but indicated in the past they did something about this kind of sunspot but have learned these days it is best to leave them alone.

But that's me....the freckle queen.  My dark skinned, beautifully tanned husband had no skin problems to be concerned about.

Little did we know by that time, he was all ready in stage 4.

September came and he was complaining of heartburn, or acid reflux more and more.  He mentioned that on occasion, food would feel funny going down, like he'd taken too big of a bite and went down "crosswise."  I don't know if he ever told the doctor this, but he just sent him home with instructions to take Prilosec.  I also noticed he had a general blah kind of feeling.  But he's not one to sit still and kept up his normal routine, for the most part.

October came and the heartburn was getting worse.  Off to the doctor he goes, and this time the doctor upped the Prilosec to twice a day.  They had me do that for about a week a while ago when I suddenly developed digestive troubles from taking ibuprofen for arthritis.  It worked like a charm.  But the double Prilosec didn't really make much difference.

Then he started losing his appetite and along with that, weight.  The occasional blah feeling seemed to grow to more and more often until there wasn't a break from it.  He developed a pain under his ribs and couldn't eat much.  By late October, he would cut a hamburger in half and eat the other half for lunch the next day.

He called the doctor and asked to move up an appointment, only to find out that they were booked.  So he asked to be put on the list for a fill in for a cancellation, should one arise.  Luckily, he got an appointment on November1st.  I decided to go with him to that appointment.  Ganging up on the doctor, I thought, might make them realize this is more than eating too much fast food.

Halloween day came.  Mondays he worked his normal job and then was called in to help with a job at our son's business so by the time I got home from work he was all ready gone.  I called to see what was up and he told me he was going to be home in a couple hours.  I could tell he wasn't feeling well and a short time later, he pulled in the driveway.  Admitting defeat...it's a rare day that he misses any work.

The next day was his appointment.  He had a visit with the PA there, a fellow who seemed to be very caring and spent a good amount of time going over things.  I asked if they had done a blood test on his liver functions, and voiced out loud that I worried about pancreatic cancer.  The blood was drawn.

Without Warning, One Day I Have A New Title: Caretaker

I'm just starting this blog as a means to blow off steam.  My husband was recently diagnosed with cancer.  Stage 4, no cure.  The role of caretaker is new to me.  The medical field is a mystery to both of us and for a reason...I don't have what it takes to be a nurse or a doctor, or anything remotely connected to doctors and hospitals.

We are country folks.  Close to the earth and nature, excited to put a seed in the ground and see it grow.  Happy to spend time outdoors, tending a vegetable garden and gaining the satisfaction of having good, healthy food, grown without pesticides and herbicides.

So this is our journey.  It's not going to be pretty.  I wouldn't be the least bit offended if you pass over this blog for something more light-hearted and fun.