Family Updates

It has been a long week. I will just start with saying that for me, nothing has changed. My sickness is the same and no real new stuff other than me having to go back to testing my blood.

Since most of you have been reading to keep with stuff about my Aunt Sharon, I will start with her. I know my last post on her was optimistic, but since she has gotten settled, things were not as rosy as they seem. She has her moments of being lucid, and her moments of being out of sorts. But the main thing is, her issues are far more than my parents can handle. It boils down to the fact that my mom is overwhelmed.  And who can blame her? She has to deal with taking care of me with my illness. For now I am on the 3rd floor of the house…and Sharon is on the 1st. If she’s with me, she can’t be with her, and vice versa. My dad is in agreement, so we have been looking for the right assisted living home for her, one that specializes in Alzheimer’s.

Now on to the new part: my father-in-law, Dale. He called early last Sunday complaining of breathing issues. Brian was concerned and drove to pick him up and bring him to the ER. Once there, they discovered congestive heart failure and fluid around his lungs. They wanted to scan the lungs better but the fluid was blocking the view. Emphysema came as an additional diagnosis shortly after. Finally, after a CT scan yesterday,  they found a mass on his lung. *sigh* I hate to say we expected this, but we did. When someone smokes over 60 years, something like this does not come as a shock or surprise. He is still in the hospital, and they will be using a scope to get a biopsy of the mass. The doctors are fairly certain the mass is cancerous, but of course hesitate to say so until after the biopsy.

It’s been a rough road with cancer in our family over the past few years. My grandmother,  never a smoker, died from lung cancer in 2006. (Her husband, my grandfather,  died of lung cancer many years earlier when I was 5.) I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2008. Then in 2009, we lost my mother-in-law, Joyce,  to pancreatic cancer. Even Brian has a pre cancerous condition. It just seems to be striking everywhere. It’s one of the many reasons the whole family gets involved in Relay For Life.

Dale is in good spirits, considering.

Hopefully,  I’ll have more news soon.