Peace at last

A bello fortiter certaverunt,

mortem cum dignitate

9/9/2015 14:15

Tough times

Paul  as asked that I take over and post the updates.  It’s really hard because there is nothing humorous about the state of things.

Things aren’t always what they appear to be.  As Paul said last month, if it could go wrong it did. Compared to his battle against charley, mine was a piece of cake, a walk in the park.

His first chemo triggered a reaction and caused the ulcers Paul didn’t know he had to flare up big time. That delayed the first radiation treatment for over a week.

Then things started going downhill.  Radiation treatments tend to sap your energy and in Paul’s case it appeared to cause some fairly serious pain.

Some good days, some bad, nut the pain was constant and it wasn’t getting managed to the level he needed. Between the pain, nausea and other issues he knew something was not right.

MRI/CAT scan whatever revealed lesions in the brain so that entailed a new course of action.  The gamma knife surgery was the best option at the time.  The results were somewhat as expected, after all it involved the destruction of some areas of the grey matter.

Nausea, loss of balance, double vision and that constant pain. Things were not getting appreciably better.  The next round of chemo caused almost as bad a reaction as the first but that was because the mediport had developed a staph infection.

The infection led to being hospitalized for heavy duty antibiotics.  But the real issue was the pain and the management of it.

Like Paul remarked, he thought he saw the light at the end of the tunnel, but he realized it was a 800 lb gorilla. 

The fight’s not over, but it’s getting tougher with each day. Like Margret said, the mind is still there but the body is slipping behind. 

If you want, now would be a good time to call and visit, but keep it short, Paul will let you know if he needs to go and he might ask you to call back after he has gotten his next round of pain meds.

I hate charley . . .

Odi illud rat spuria vitulamina charley