About me: Married, with children.This blog was started to track my wife's breast cancer journey, now in remission, but has since wandered into other territory too.
I haven’t posted here in ages and most of you few remaining followers have already heard the news via other channels.
My best friend of 43 years and wife of more than 38 years ended her journey with cancer Sunday morning, dying in her sleep and in my arms. Jody began home hospice care only last Wednesday, and everyone but one thought that she had at least a few more weeks or months. But it was as if being in hospice gave her permission to end the suffering. On her way home Wednesday from the hospital, where she had spent two nights, she told me “I’ve given you ten years to prepare for this,” and also “I’m not going to last as long as everyone thinks I will.”
On Saturday afternoon I kissed her and told her I loved her, as I often did, and she said “I love you too” and then gave me a big grin. After that she started going downhill rapidly. I held her upright nearly all night so that she could breathe a little better, but by almost 5:30 I got to the point where I was afraid I would fall asleep and then fall off the bed. I laid her down and snuggled up to her and quickly drifted off to sleep. Moments later I awoke because she was no longer struggling to breathe. She had kindly waited so that I didn’t have to watch her die. It was 5:36.
Thank you to all of you who were friends of @redqueenxlt and @kelsium and then became friends of me way back in 2013, when Jody began her initial breast cancer journey and I started this account so that friends and family could follow along on the journey, but J didn’t have to talk about it. Four years ago, when the journey was renewed, I started a CaringBridge account for her. I have and will post more details there about her life, cancer journey, and death, and will soon have information about remembrances, memorials, donations, and all that. Go to CaringBridge.org and search for Jody VanderYacht.
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First activity for the New Year: making cinnamon rolls for breakfast. With a beginning like this, I'm doing my best to make it a great year! What's your great beginning?
At dinner we discussed the best and worst thing about the year.
Quite obviously J’s new cancer diagnosis is the worst.
We decided the best part of the year was landing. We landed back in the Mitten with a job I like, a home we like, and we are not far from my family. We don’t even want to imagine facing these next four months back in Upstate, no offense to all our wonderful friends back there, but it’s good to have family nearby.
I originally started this blog to report on my wife’s first battle with breast cancer almost six years ago. Jody had her own tumblr, but didn’t really want to talk about her illness, so I took on that role so her friends could know what was going on. I met lot of great people because of tumblr, including some in real life. After nearly ten months, Jody was declared cancer-free (or at least as cancer free as one can be, given, y’know, Cancer), and my blog evolved into other things, like gardening and food.
But, it’s back. Yes, Jody has once again been diagnosed with cancer. So the blog is circling back to its beginning. [Lots more details after the jump.]
In October Jody developed a cough, which she thought was just a symptom of a cold she had at the time. But after the cold went away, the cough didn’t. She suspected it had become a case of walking pneumonia. Since we were planning on going to visit her almost 90-year-old mother for Thanksgiving, Jody decided to get her lung situation checked out, so she wouldn’t be contagious during our visit.
Because we just move to this mid-Mitten town, we didn’t yet have a primary care physician, so she called the local urgent care facility. They told her that if she was having trouble breathing that they would most likely just send her to Emergency at the hospital in the next town over, so they suggested she go directly there instead, which is what Jody did. She called me after a few hours (I was busy teaching) and told me that they had taken a chest x-ray and didn’t like what they saw, so they wanted to do some more tests. A CT scan came back even less promising, and they directed her to an oncologist so she could get additional tests done. Now, in order for her to have an MRI and some of the other tests, she needed to have a PCP, which now we have, and he formally referred her to the oncologist.
The Wednesday after Thanksgiving Jody met with the oncologist who had studied her x-ray and CT scan, and he referred her for some additional tests, including an MRI and a biopsy of lung tissue. She spent all of one afternoon and into the evening getting a PET scan and an MRI of her head. The PET scan was not good, but the MRI of her head showed nothing. (ß Joke, yes you may laugh).
The results, in summary: cancer in both lungs, both hips, in her spine, and in numerous lymph nodes. It’s not simply a tumor to be excised. Numerically: stage 4 metastatic cancer. The biopsy indicates that it is the same cancer as she had in her breast and a few lymph nodes back in 2013.
The prognosis: if she has no treatment, she will not likely live even a year. With chemotherapy and possibly additional hormone therapy, her five-year survival probability is perhaps 40-50%.
Despite her statement after chemo the first time that she would never do it again, Jody will start chemotherapy this Friday. Her initial schedule is to do six rounds at three-week intervals, which takes us to mid-April. Last time she followed the chemo that shrunk her tumor with a radical mastectomy. Can’t do that to both her lungs.
In her current condition, Jody finds it difficult to breathe deeply, as the growth in her lungs is constricting her bronchial tubes. When she changes her body position, she often starts coughing. She tries to breathe and move very carefully, but that causes anxiety. Anxiety causes her core muscles to contract, making it more difficult to breathe, leading to more coughing. And, you have a negative feedback loop. With our most recent consultation with one of the oncologists, we explored and thoroughly discussed this issue, and we are working to alter her drug therapies for her anxiety/depression and also her asthma. Already, prior to any formal changes to her medicine, just by knowing what part of the problem is, Jody has modified her own prescription schedule a little so that it is helping her breathing. She made it all through family Christmas dinner and socializing with only one mild coughing spell. The oncologist says that she may see rapid improvement in her breathing perhaps after only one dose of chemo. Breathing is good.
That’s what we know right now, and now you do to. So, what can you do?
Thoughts and prayers are always welcome, but more tangible expressions are even nicer, too: cards, visits, emails. Financially we are luckier than most with a family safety net, and better off than we were the first time around, when we had to COBRA her insurance to maintain coverage. Our deductibles and copays are better now, too. (Yay for teachers’ unions, and all other unions that help and protect their members and their families!) We got through this the first time with lots of emotional support from friends and family, and that helps a lot. Having great senses of humor, and people to humor us, was also important. So, send us funny things! Jody starts many sentences these days with “Not to be morbid, but…” If we cannot laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at?
If you are nearby, visits are welcome, but please call ahead to make sure that she didn’t just finish a chemo treatment and is now busy for the next three days puking her guts out—she’s not a very good hostess in those conditions. Delivering food, while appreciated, is not necessary, as her appetite has already waned over the past six weeks and will definitely get worse during chemo. Also, I like to cook and it is an outlet for my own tension and anxiousness, plus it’s my favorite way to show people I love them, so I want to cook for her what foods she may actually want to eat.
Please feel free to email or message your questions or concerns. I’m a teacher by nature as well as profession, so I like sharing knowledge about our situation and how we are dealing with it; it’s actually therapeutic for me I believe. And if I can help others understand what we are going through, maybe it will be easier for them to go through their own similar traumas in the future, and then Jody’s cancer will have been an indirect way to make the world a slightly better place for some people.
One more thing: death. There is a strong likelihood that this bout of cancer will kill my wife. Perhaps not immediately but eventually. Jody is not afraid of death, however. She is already a survivor, as a child, of a near-death experience, and has positive expectations for the next Act in this eternal improvisation we call life. She has no unfinished business, no regrets, no amends to make, and has been a light unto this present world, and welcomes the peace that comes with death from this life, whenever that may occur. That said, she’s willing to fight the good fight for her current life for the people around her who she loves and who would sorely miss her. And she looks forward to the continuing opportunity to do more Good for others while still here on Earth.
I have set up a Caring Bridge account, if you are interested in more day-to-day reports. Posts here to tumblr are more likely to be of the general week-at-a-time variety.
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Just donated blood. The RC and the NHS do a blood drive every 8 weeks at the HS where I teach, so I can donate on my prep period. Great way to avoid those annoying ‘please donate’ phone calls. Oh, and it’s a good way to help other people, too.
We’ve been happy campers for so long, though, that we’re taking our time moving in even though the house is move-in ready. It’ll probably be two or three more days until we pull up the jacks on our fifth wheel. Labor Day weekend is made for camping.
I’ve been happy living in our fifth wheel for the past month (yes, I’m a happy camper!), but we are looking forward to having, for example, a kitchen that is as large as our entire trailer.
And having to hike across the street in the dark in the morning to get ready for work gets old real quick.
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We're down to five days until we pack up and go. Here are some things that have been (not)/happening.
I had a job interview at the excellent HS closest to my parents' home. I had a second interview there as well. I didn't get the job.
The septic saga continues, mostly aided and abetted by people's inability or desire to return phone calls--how do some people stay in business? We may have to have a new septic field installed, but we still don't know because no one wants to come inspect it. This may delay our closing.
I'd say we are about 90% packed, due 90% to J. What's left? In addition to everyday living items, I need to finish packing my office, the tool room/workshop, and ugh the garage. The first two are in the basement, so cooler in this heat wave. I worked on the garage for awhile this morning.
Son T is coming to help with the loading and driving. Then we each fly back east on different days & destinations and I haul the fifth wheel west while J goes south to visit her mom and do the food freezer restocking thing.
Then I live in my mom's basement and try to find a job that isn't horrible for the upcoming school year.
Spent yesterday and today hauling boxes of our belongings to a storage unit as we once again prepare to Sell the House. Also did a bunch of spring cleanup yardwork, as the weather was actually spring-like for a few hours.
Wish us success this time. Not that last fall was a failure at all because things happen for Reasons, but I think we are ready to move on with our lives, with a new chapter in a new place.
Invited friends over for dinner but they couldn’t make it. Decided to fix the same dinner anyway--we’ll just get wonderful leftovers later this week! Baked a couple loaves of French-style bread and made linguine with bacon & shrimp & clams & spinach in a garlic cream sauce. Friends don’t know what they missed!
Expecting only about 6", but timing is everything.
Quick trip to the grocery store this morning before roads got bad. Put together a 500-piece jigsaw together. Shoveled the first 5" from the walks and driveway together.
Going to make something for dessert, but I really need to get some schoolwork done. And I want to read all of the books I checked out of the library last evening. And I want to bake some cookies. And take a nap.
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It's a holiday from school, so let's see how many pots and pans and bowls I can get dirty. Made a lemon-blueberry pound cake, have Irish beef stew in the oven, and will make soda bread to go with supper.
