Hi guys -
sorry this gathers you all together and that you are dealing with this disease. Much love to everyone.
I'm new here - so here's a synoptic version of the story:
My mom is 82 and developed pain and incontinenace last fall, was diagnosed with bladder cancer in early December and had bladder removed on January 23 at Stanford Hospital in California. The surgery knocked her on her butt and she has not really been released. She was in the hospital for 12 days then straight to nursing home.
She had been living in California and I live in Idaho. She decided she wanted to move here to be closer to us so we have arranged all that and she moved to a nursing home here in Boise. We saw the oncologist for here in Boise a couple of weeks ago.
Now, I should say that in California I stayed with her and met with her docters and all, but it was never super clear on what her biobsy meant. It was a tumor that had spread through the muscle of the bladder and they removed 14 lymph glands, two of wich had microscopic cancer cells. On the biopsy report it say 'metazised; unknown", but when she went in for her first chemo treatment (she was still inCA and I was back home in idaho) the dr found her kidneys to be low functioning and instead of chemo they admited her for a couple of blood transfusions then back to the nursing home. She wasn't too happy about that because she has a 'DNR' order out. So anyway when we finally got her to the oncologist here he said mom is stave IV cancer and not a candidate for chemo. Bummer.
He through out a lot of figures and percentages but she is continuing to slowly recover from the surgery. She is now walking without a walker sometimes and stays awake most of the day. She had lost a lot of weight and we told this to the oncologist but since that meeting two weeks ago she is put on a couple of pounds and I think she is still seeing some improvment and that her weakness was due to her age and the sevarity of that surgery.
The oncologist was clear that this is it for mom, I was there and I wanted to ask, how much time have we got? but I didn't want to ask that in front of mom becasue she was - well you understand. He said 70% fatality rate in 3 years - probably well within that three years. She's been accepted into hospics wich usually means a prognosis of less than 6 months, I think. But reallY? She seems to be doing better than that. She has no pain at all right now.
I know it's an impossible question for this forum, but what do you think??
many thanks for your thoughts and much love to all of you.
