To the DK community, of which she has been a part for many years, and in particular to the Cheers & Jeers community and the New England Kossacks meet-ups community:
JBL55 is in hospital. If I were in hospital she would “pray without ceasing” as she often says. But I’m an atheist and do not pray. If you are like JBL55 and believe in the power of prayer, please go ahead.
Two years ago, she found out she had metastatic cancer. She told me that she said to her doctors, who were expecting a waterfall of tears, that, well, this was the fourth time she had heard the words “you have cancer.”
The first time, she was young, it was cervical cancer, excised, easy-peasy.
The second time she was still young, around thirty, a sarcoma she and her doctors assumed was an ovarian cyst that just wouldn’t quit. Not easy. They opened her up, found a sarcoma attached to her small intestines, and had to keep extending the opening northward so they could remove the damned thing and re-arrange her intestines. The sarcoma was so big and heavy, it had dragged the spot on the intestines where it had grown all the way down to the point where, yes, they thought it was her ovary.
The third time, it was breast cancer, 2006. Double mastectomy, chemo, reconstructive plastic surgery. But “the sentinel lode is clear!” According to their best tests, the cancer was contained and hadn’t entered the lymph system.
The fourth time, like I said, was two years ago. She had pix taken to investigate diverticulitis, and there was an ominous shadow. More diagnostics, and the you-have-cancer statement was that, lymph system be damned, she had cancer in her hip bone. Over time, more tests. In her liver. And more tests. In her bladder. More tests. Everywhere in her skeletal system.
She has been on cancer meds for two years. When the cancer was found in her liver earlier this year, she went on a heavy-duty, brand-new med that almost killed her. She stopped taking it, and when she was recovered from its side effects, she started on it again at half-dose. This worked for several months, but then once again the side effects knocked her over.
She was admitted to hospital Tuesday, there is evidence (not yet confirmed, people, I must still keep hoping) of cancer in her brain. She had some kind of infection, and is on antibiotics for that, so the hope, believe it or not, is that the infection spread to her brain rather than the cancer.
I’m waiting to hear from her husband, my amazing brother-in-law, the results from the lumbar puncture procedure (formerly known as spinal tap, which, if she were lucid, she would totally get a kick out of) to find out what’s clobbering her brain.
JBL55 is my “baby” sister. She has hundreds of friends from all over the world because people are important to her, and she always, by snail-mail, email, text, FB, DKos, reaches out to them.
For those Kossacks who love her, I will do my best to keep you informed. Of course it depends on what and when hubby tells me what he has learned, and my ability to type through my tears.