There is something I try to do occasionally. Slow down time. If you don’t measure time in minutes but rather in moments, you really can learn to slow it down. And then there are the times you want to speed it up. Like my sister did yesterday.

My poor sister. . I really feel like the resources at my disposal are inadequate to ease her pain and suffering. And I hate feeling inadequate. But wait.. this isn’t about me.

The doctor told my sister that if my BIL’s tumor was cancerous, they would do the surgery all at once. They would remove the tumor from his butt cheek, lower back and thigh and then flip him and remove it from the pelvis. However, the doctor was hopeful they would only have to do the backside and it would take no longer then 4 hours.

Well so now we get to the surgery yesterday. After five hours, and being told that the surgeon would send out the nurse to let her know how it was going… there was no word. At 5 ½ hours, my sister was in a full on panic. The OR nurse said that “they would be out to talk to her soon” but she could get no additional information. She pleaded with the OR nurse to just tell her “is he on his back or his stomach?” Figuring if she heard he was now on his back, that cancer was probably found.

Finally, the doctor came out. He told her that the initial path report was that this wasn’t cancer but the final report would come back in a week. He called it “sticky” and said the tumor was really hard to remove. He thought it started in thigh and since BIL is so muscular, that it was “compressed” and went up higher in the leg searching for room to grow. His butt is muscular too, so then it moved to the pelvis. And that’s where it found room to grow. They were only able to remove the tumor from his butt and leg. The pelvis will wait for another surgery.

Pain control is an issue since they had to cut through so much muscle and dig out the tumor. The morphine drip isn’t cutting it. I suspect that if he has another bad night to tonight, they will consider an epidural.

He might have beat the cancer rap, but his mom has not been so lucky. The week his father died he found out she had late stage III, stage IV breast cancer. That is another long story but she has been through a handful of rounds of chemo and is not doing well. Her immune system is just nonresistant and she’s suffering with infection after infection. She’s back in the hospital with what they think is pneumonia. But I heard this morning that they did a “Thoracotomy-something-or-other” and they took a whole liter of fluid off her lungs. They called her pneumonia mild. Either that fluid is cancer metasis or the pneumonia isn’t mild. Either way, doesn’t look good. She’s very young too, only in her late fifties. And Jim’s father who was 57 died only months ago. He doesn’t know about his mom yet. He knows she’s back in the hospital but he doesn’t know that it’s looking like cancer metasis.

They are focusing on the immediate crisises. Like how to get BIL home in a car when he can’t sit for that long. How much time my sister will have to take off of work. She is working per diem and doesn’t have benefits. So when she’s out of work, she doesn’t get paid. And they just bought a house. And they are worried about his job. He works 32 hours for FedEx and so he doesn’t qualify for FMLA since he’s not at 40 hours. Funny how that all works.

So prayers continue. We hope. We are very happy it doesn’t look like cancer for BIL. We are praying for his mom. We are praying for his next surgery and we are taking one day and one crisis at a time. I say this “we” because I want to be involved and make it better in some way, right? Perhaps make choices easier, perhaps speed up time, perhaps simply be a listener. Again it all seems inadequate. I just know that I want to take a steam roller to their rocky road and smooth out all the bumps on this road less traveled.

Related posts:

  1. stuff
    2.   I'm speaking for the PTSA tonight. Gah. I...
  2. Just a slice of today
    3.   Mornin’. Today is another exciting day....
  3. My mother anger
    4.   Last night my sister called to tell me that...