Mommy Cancer Journey

Yesterday the CT scan came back negative for a pulmonary embolism (whew!)  So the doctor gave my mom 2 choices:  1. Go  home:  If she's feeling "good enough"  she can go home and make an appointment with a pulmonologist on her own time to get the fluid drained  2. Get admitted into the hospital:  Get admitted into the hospital and stay for an indefinite amount of time (due to the holiday weekend, its unknown when she would be able to see the specialist she needs)  Mom chose to come home.  I made a bunch of nutritious soups in my instant pot for her to eat, and made her drink some juice. And she seems to be doing much better!  Gary's parents are here for the weekend to come see her.  Its a full house for us right now.  

I woke up this morning to find my mom crying in bed from pain. I've rarely seen my mom cry, much less cry from physical pain. She's a little dragon mom: ultra strong mentally and physically. It came as a huge shock to see her curled up crippled by pain. I startled my sister awake and texted Gary right away. We rushed her to the Loma Linda ER. Thankfully Gary was able to meet us there-- and wow we breezed through the ER thanks to Gary's kindness to those he works with regularily. She got an X-ray, and and ultrasound-- were waiting on. CT scan now to make sure she doesn't have a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs) From the ultrasound-- we could see mom had some fluid built up in her lungs. We are currently still here waiting to see what's next. In best case scenario-- hopefully she just had some acid reflux that caused the pain. Hoping for that!

It's been about a week since mom was in the Hospital. She's been staying at my house (michelle) for the time being. We transformed (read overturned)  our downstairs study in to a fully furnished room for her. And put our study out in the living room. (My client meeting area transformed into an office haha) We didn't want her to go up and down stairs for the time being.  After a week, she seemed to be doing better. She insisted she wanted to go back and stay at her home in Coto de casa. And in just a few days it seemed like her condition worsened. I think she is to anxious to do things. We visited the oncologist today. It turns out mom has a really eare mutation of cancer. Egfr Econ-20 duplication mutation. There isn't a lot of info or studies avaliable on it-- the little bit of info that we could find on google implied a median 16 month life span. Shocking and scary. Mom is taking the time to consider chemo and immunotherapy. She initially didn't want to...

I decided to keep a journal to update everyone with how my mom is doing. This is everything up to date: 5/10/17- ER visit Mom was having major chest pain and trouble breathing-- we took her to to ther ER at St. Joseph's. Turns out she had a Pericardial Effusion-- this is a  huge build of of fluid in the sac around her heart. We also discovered a nodule in her lungs and she was admitted into the hospital overnight 5/11/17- 3 surgeries - fluid drained from around her heart - surgery for a pericardial window to prevent fluid from building up again - lung mass was biopsied 5/13/17- its Cancer The lung mass turned out to be cancer :( more testing was done to find out severity and if it spread 5/14/17- Stage 4 lung cancer Bad news, Mom has stage 4 lung cancer.  The pathology results showed she has cancer in the fluid they drained from her heart.  We're still waiting on the genealogy report to see what type she has. 5/15/17- discharged from the hospital