Terminal Cancer Sucks

My mom is in the hospital with terminal cancer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988 and had a full mastectomy on one side followed by radiation therapy. She was diagnosed with stage four triple negative breast cancer in her bones 23 years later in the summer of 2011. She made good improvements under the care of Vanderbilt’s oncologists receiving chemotherapy and then participating in a clinical trial. Two weeks ago she started getting very sick with what we thought was a bad stomach bug. After three trips to the emergency room she was finally admitted. Thursday May 24, 2012 she was diagnosed with carcinomatous meningitis.

Carcinomatous meningitis occurs when cancer cells spread from another tumor site to the meninges (thin layers of tissue that cover and protect the brain and spinal cord). Her symptoms have included nausea/vomiting, back pain, headaches, short term memory loss, and general weakness (she cannot stand up). Initial treatment is a shunt to drain excess cerebrospinal fluid which she had put in on May 25th and felt almost instant relief from nausea and headaches. She will be starting radiation therapy Thursday and she is having a permanent shunt put in tomorrow. Doctors have given her a prognosis of 3-6 months with treatment. She is currently at Northside Forsyth Hospital. She is taking visitors for short periods of time. We hope that she will be strong enough to come home at some point but she will probably end up going to a local hospice.

I knew that some day my mom would die. I even knew that it would be sooner rather than later with her having cancer in her bones. I just never realized it would be so soon. I don't think we are ever ready for this. My mom is only 60 years old. I feel almost beside myself with grief and she's not even gone yet. Part of me hopes that I outlive my children so that they never have to go through this.

Actual AT&T service coming to Vanderbilt!

Soon I will lose that close connection I feel to other AT&T users at Vanderbilt as we stand out in the courtyard waving our phones around while we wait to get a signal.

Actual decent AT&T cell service is coming to the Vanderbilt Medical Center Campus! I dare say most AT&T users at Vanderbilt are new to campus since AT&T service in and around the medical center is almost nonexistent. I was about to switch providers until a guy at the AT&T store gave me a heads up about a buildout happening on the medical campus. Several phone calls later and I am happy to share the details with all the world.

A cell site is being installed and ten buildings are being equipped with digital antennae with about three buidings being rolled out every few months. The cell tower site on PRB will be finished by the end of March 2012. According to Judy Whitley, the project manager at Vanderbilt, "That coverage will have a bigger impact on the Vanderbilt community and outlying areas from the Vanderbilt campus." The first inbuilding phase should be finished in April 2012  The buildings for each phase of the buildout and expected completion dates are listed below (list courtesy Judy Whitley). I also spoke with Mark Mowery at AT&T who is overseeing this project and he sounded very excited about the build out and assured me that this would be a significant improvement. We should have 4G coverage in the builtout areas.

AT&T In-building Project Phases and Buildings:

April 2012 - phase 1 - Kirkland Hall, VUH including CCT, VCH including DOT, MCE North Tower

August 2012 - phase 2 – MCN including VUIIS, TVC, MCE South Tower

October 2012 - phase 3 – PRB, MRB3, MAB

The downside to good AT&T coverage at Vanderbilt? I'm going to have to remember to put my phone on silent during class and meetings.

How to Read Scientific Journal Papers

Reading a scientific journal paper is not like reading a text book. You are not just trying to absorb information as fact. The authors are trying to convince you that they are right. Maybe they are right and someday their findings will be in a textbook. The most important thing about the paper is the experiments they did that support their claims. Since we were not present when they did their experiments, the only way we can see their results is in the figures and tables. This is the meat of the paper and the part that should be focused on. Thinking of it like a court case, the writing is mostly the lawyers blabbing on about why you should believe their side (discussion) with a little bit of testimony thrown in (methods). The  figures and tables are the "hard evidence". This is what makes or breaks the case. The evidence may not support the claims very well. There could be major flaws such as missing controls or obvious experiments that should have been done but were not. Bad papers do get published and even good papers can have mistakes. Read everything with a grain of salt and make your own decisions instead of letting the authors spoon feed you results. The more exciting the discovery, the more critically you should read. That's my two cents.

Grit

Papa always said that my mom had grit. I now fully understand that after talking to her on the phone tonight. She was laughing and joking with me. She has stage four bone cancer caused by metastatic breast cancer and is in the hospital tonight because of severe chest pain possibly due to a blood clot or heart attack.

I don't know how much time I have left with her but I hope to continue to learn from her for as long as I can. She has been through so much in her life and has taught me so much. She has endured hard times and has pushed through it all. Her husband died when they were 33 and then she got breast cancer several years later when she was 35, all with two small children to raise.

My mom is intuitively good with kids and parenting. I'll never forget the time when I was so mad at her, I was about 6, and I tried to think of the meanest thing I could say to her. I told her that I was going to be a better mom than she was. She looked at me and said "I hope you are."  Her response took all the wind out of my sails and I stored that reply away and used it years later when my daughter said the same thing to me. My mom also came up with the snowflake ballerina which is the most genius way to get a three year old excited about having her hair washed. All you need is a good lather, a bun, and bubbles on top for snow.

Grit means that you keep going and persevering through everything life may throw at you without becoming bitter and jaded. I only hope that I prove to have as much grit as my mom.

Update on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 5:35AM by Cara

Looks like my mom has pulmonary edema. No heart attack, no blood clot.

My Niece is on the Way!

My sister is about to experience that amazing moment when you realize the all the aches and pains of pregnancy were just a prelude to something much greater than you ever imagined. Colleen is in surgery now having a C-section. My new niece Avery might even be here already!