Confections For Cats

2-28-14 8:00 am started on O2 stomach is larger still low-grade fever Added cousin Allison to the consent form  “You need to get him out of that small-town hospital.” Transfer him to me, Allison texted me. She was doing her fellowship in Orlando. I did consider this. If Mathew had not been accepted at Moffitt when he was, I probably would have transferred him to Allison. But I had to evaluate the logistics. That was over 60 miles away, and I had to consider Mathew’s father and stepmother in being able to be with him. In retrospect, one of us always being with Mathew had a lot to do with how well he did as long as he did.  9:51 am   waiting, waiting, waiting

Six months, possibly more, before his diagnosis, Mathew had a personality change. The Sarcoma Doctor at Moffit told me that by the time most young people are diagnosed with these types of soft tissue sarcomas, they have lost their jobs, their friends are avoiding them and family aren’t speaking to them. They are alone. So by this time, the tumor is so large, and it is impacting waste removal from his liver, gall bladder, and kidneys. He is full of toxins. My niece assured me that after his first chemo, Mathew would be back to normal. Each day when the doctors would come in, Mathew had already made his own notes and lists of questions (and we parents had made ours in The Notebook), but Mathew insisted on asking his first. Then we would ask ours. But what was so poignant was each time Mathew was through talking to the doctor or doctors, he would ask the same question. “Is there anything I need to be doing.”

Quoted from the notebook Prelim Diagnosis "High-grade undifferentiated round cell cancer." Still don't know if it is a lymphoma, sarcoma or carcinoma. Lymphoma would be best. High-grade lymphomas respond quickly to treatment.  (This is information I received from my niece, Allison.) The two definitions below, I looked up today for further explanation. I am glad I didn't look them up at the time. Things were happening so fast it was almost impossible to be proactive beyond my "crunching the timeline" efforts. Everything else was reactive. Now, reading these two definitions hurts my soul. *** High - grade cancer  cells tend to grow and spread more quickly than low- grade cancer  cells. **** Undifferentiated cancer :  cancer  in which the cells are very immature and "primitive" and do not look like cells in the tissue from it arose. As a rule, an  undifferentiated cancer  is more malignant than  cancer  of that ty

2-27-14 I don’t recall when everything happened the first week after his hospital admission and cancer diagnosis, but two things happened this first week that set the tone for the rest of the year. First of all, Mathew’s friend Alan brought a guitar to the room. Mathew even played it a few times while at the Zephyrhills Hospital and he played it the first few weeks at Moffitt. Secondly, my sister Kathleen, as soon as we heard the word cancer, she said Mathew could move into her home. This is significant. Mathew had been at the end of an apartment lease in Tampa. When I helped him move back to Dade City, he was unemployed due to him being sick and had moved in with a family friend. Mathew thought it would be temporary, that once they figured out what was wrong with him, he could get back to work and get his own place. So, one day, while Mathew’s Stepmom was with him, Kathleen and I made a few trips and moved all of his belongings and his two cats to her home. Her home was large

FROM THE NOTEBOOK 2-27-14 Can more pain meds be given? Rash on back Mild fever jaundice returning concerned he may be bleeding internally from procedures. By this time we had already decided that Mathew would never be alone, that meant for the most part, that I was with him overnight. Not that he slept much. TIP:  I learned that while Mathew had company during the day, the best use of my time was crunching the timeline. Checking which orders were coming through, checking with the case manager to see what was happening towards getting Mathew to Moffitt. You can’t just sit and wait.  They knew when they saw me walking up to them that I wanted an update. Someone was sitting at a desk in the hall outside of Mathew’s room working on the logistics. I was impressed, but I know my nudging made a difference.

I will occasionally post these place holder blog posts. This now will eventually have images from that scan/biopsy.