Confections For Cats

The Sarcoma Doctor had a nurse, Kathy. She came in at the beginning of Mathew’s appointments and was available during the day if I had a concern. In fact, one day she returned my call and said “When I saw your name and number, I knew something was wrong.” They knew I paid close attention to Mathew and what the doctors and nurses explained to me.  Anyway, one time towards the beginning of this journey a comment was made and I had a question, I don’t recall the preceding conversation, but the end result was this statement by Kathy. “We can tell what is going on with the cancer by looking at the patient.” At the time, I believed her but had no clue what she meant. Some of it was obvious, such as the way Mathew looked when he was first admitted compared to how he looked after just two treatments. But over time I came to understand what she meant. One day I looked at Mathew as he sat on the exam table and Dr. Reed tried to examine his abdomen. I say, tried, because Mathew, eve...

Second IE chemo I learned by mistake. When Moffitt calls to say you will be admitted that evening, they don’t mean 7 or 8 o’clock. More like 10 o’clock or later. Eventually I saw how this made sense, but at the time it was another bump in the road for Mathew. He was getting so anxious anticipating the hospital stay and the chemotherapy that instead of sitting around we decided to drive down to Tampa and get something to eat figuring we would be called shortly afterward. Nope. We ended up sitting and waiting in the car. Adding to Mathew’s discomfort was not on my list of caregiver roles. I felt terrible then and again now as I write this.  Anyway, it was quite late when we received the call and went into admitting. It only took a few minutes once we were there before we were able to go up to his room. The following are texts between me and Arpie, Me and Diane and me and Allison. Late night both of us exhausted. Chemo  started at almost 5 am. Still running...