I used to think there were just two kinds of sick. The kind that could be cured and the kind that couldn't. It seems now that this outlook was a bit naive. There's a whole messy spectrum in the middle.
Cancer is one of those diseases that defies conventional notions of illness. No other disease goes into remission. Remission is nothing more than when Sick tags Healthy with a big "you're it." Just as you can count on the Lions loosing on Thanksgiving day, you can count on Sick ultimately winning.
My father's cancer is back. My parents returned to Karmanos Institute to talk with oncologists about what to do next. The doctors my dad had the first time around weren't there any longer. They had moved one. The new doctor recommended another stem cell transplant, this time using marrow from a donor rather than using my dad's own cells as they did before. This procedure averages 3-6 months in the hospital versus the 21 days my dad was in the first time. The doctor wasn't all that friendly and spent as much time with my parents as the person who hands you your Frosty from the Wendy's drive-thru.
The catch is that my father's primary insurance provider has changed since last time around. Now his VA insurance will not cover another procedure. The transplant typically costs $400,000. If my parents decide to pursue that option, coming up with that kind of money would not be easy. We might be able to scrape it together but that would leave my mom with nothing. So how does one decide if its worth it? How much is it work to have him around for another Christmas? to have him walk my sister down the aisle? to keep him around long enough to for me or my sister to pop out a grandchild? This procedure, like the first, is at best only likely to put the cancer into remission for 1-3 more years.
Now i better understand what the people who throw those cancer fund raising events are going through. It's frustrating that the insurance companies can just turn their back like that. My dad most likely acquired the cancer while fighting for his country in Vietnam, and now the government thanks him by paying for pain medications rather than fighting the disease.
In the mean time, my dad is undergoing a new chemo drug. I took him to his appointment the day after Thanksgiving. We went into this long room that had 15-20 lay-z-boy type chairs all along the perimeter. Flanking each of the recliners was a cheep plastic chair and an IV pump. Windows covered two of the walls which allowed one to view the large snowflakes fall to the ground. A one end of the room a large television was showing Family Feud. There were only three other people in the room which is unusually slow for the office. The nurse asked if my dad had a seating preference and placed him in a recliner. The appetizer was a half a bag of fluids to get him hydrated. That took just over an hour. The end of the course was signaled by the beeping of the IV pump. Next came a dose of the anti-nausea meds which only took 15 minutes or so. After that, the nurse administered the main course. The type of chemo my dad got as in a simple syringe. The injection took no more than 15 seconds. The meal concluded with another 15 minutes of fluids.
This week my dad has been weaker than usual. He has fallen twice after his legs just gave out on him. The last fall was the day before Thanksgiving, and it left him with a black eye. He decided not to go to the Flickinger family celebration at my uncle's house; my mother stayed home with him. My sister and i still went to the large family gathering but it wasn't the same. We left early and returned to my parents house where my mom had cooked a meal just for the the immediate family.
Sunday is my dad's birthday. Instead of going out to eat, i've been asked to bring home some take out. Apparently my dad doesn't like going out to eat anymore. The mass in his chest (the one the doctors have acknowledged but aren't concerned about for some reason) can make it difficult to eat. He doesn't want to choke in public.
My cousin sent me a link to a journal kept by Dwight Ozard who also had Multiple Myeloma. He went though many of the same procedures as my father and we wrote about what he went though. Dwight finally passed away just this month. Since i don't post that much about cancer here, if you want to know more about the disease, that's a good place to look.
Posted by Matthew at November 26, 2005 06:02 PM