jaynus

Jen How is your dad doing now? Has he picked up a bit of energy? My mom is still the same, not better not worse. She’s having an MRI soon to see if the cancer has spread. Currently it is in her lower abdominal cavity as well as liver but I’m praying it hasnt moved much. Her energy lever is not bad. She has been drinking some chinese herbal teas and getting regular accupuncture which I think has helped a little. If you’d like to know the clinc she’s going to i’ll let you know. I am also going to speak with someone who specializes in raw food diet to try to help her out. Let me know if you want me to pass any info along and how you’re dad is doing

take care
Janet

jen I have to make this brief on my way to work. Her surgeon was Dr. Elijah Dixon. She actually had an incision and exploratory surgery before they diagnosed her with stage 4. Did you’re dad have an incision as well?
Im thinking that might have been the reason they waited so long to send her on to oncology (healing time and all)?? Not sure though. I guess that’s neither here nor there it’s in the past. Let me know if you had the same surgeon. We didn’t have a very good experiance with him. It was evident he gave up on her once she was past surgical intervention. Never returned phone calls and we never saw his face again afterwards during all the times she was admitted in and out of hospital after the surgery. We only saw residents from his team and even that would take forever.

We’ll chat again soon
Janet

Hello everyone thanks for all your support youre so great! I don’t even know where to start to explain all that we have been through. First of all i’m from Canada, Calgary Alberta. The best cancer centre we have in the province is in my city it’s “Tom Baker Cancer Centre”. It is in high demand and due to the large population that must be why we had to wait. I’m thinking a lot of the reason for the delay might have been becaue she needed to be followed from the surgeon for a bit first because she was fresh post surgery and he probably didn’t want to send the referral until she was partially recovered from that. I just don’t understand why they didn’t send it right away as the waiting process is so long he could have kept following her in the meantime anyway. We had asked this and didn’t get much response on that. Also I asked the surgical team about speaking with the cancer centre about moving her up and they said it probably wouldn’t happen as there were some people ahead of her needing chemo before they’re surgeries which took priority. Her oncology visit is finally happening today but now she is so weak because she has been in hospital fasting for the past few days while waiting for procedures to try and adjust her tubes/drain bags which they have been messing around with for the past month!! I may have to go see her oncologist on my own

She currently has 2 metal stents and 2 drain bags. They have kept the bags in place because she has control to open and close the drains on these and once they take them away that control will be gone. It seems her body is not tolerating the clamping. She always gets symptoms as soon as they clamp her off. Until her body can tolerate that they don’t want to take the bags away. It is very obvious that aren’t sure what to do themselves they have been poking and prodding on her for quite some time now with no real plan of attack to tell us. Her surgeon seems to have vanished and never returns her calls. Now we only deal with residents on his team who take forever to get back to us. One of her drain tubes had a leak for the last little while and now it has fallen right out. She is sitting in hospital once again waiting to get that addressed, fasting and getting weaker and weaker every day. Once again a situation that could have been avoided if the surgeon would have returned the call and written up the order for the procedure ahead of time. To be quite frank her care has been totally unacceptable!! There is really no where else to go though and we don’t have much choice but to just try and get through it. The health care system here needs some serious addressing right now. Her illness came at a bad time. Things were much better a few years back with the system.

She is starting to get very emotional now and things are terrible, but i’m trying to tell myself that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before things get better…….right??

thanks for everyones kind words
Janet