I was just thinking about tomorrow, it’s mother’s day. Another marking point, a first without you… Then I remembered where we were last year at this time. The headaches, and visits to the ER, the vomiting. Everything leading up to mothers day.
We woke up early in the morning, your headaches had gotten too bad again. None of the medicines they had given us would touch these headaches, but every trip to the hospital ER, each CT scan they did we were told there was nothing. You knew better, you knew there was something. I kept wanting to believe them, just believe that there wasn’t anything. Maybe it really was just post operative pain from the craniotomy.
Mothers day… You were tired of going to Greene, tired of them telling you there was nothing, drugging you up then sending you home. You just wanted someone to find out what was going on, and fix it. So this time we went to Kettering hospital, even though it was a long drive over horrible bumpy construction roads, we were sure they would look deeper, and find something.
We were admitted to the ER, and put into one of the exam rooms, for several hours… A physician assistant made an appearance a while after we first got there, and the nurse came in once or twice, but no doctor. We could see him sitting at the desk the whole time, working on his computer, but he never came to see you…
After leaving us in the exam room for so damn long the PA came back. Maybe they would do another CT, or better yet an MRI… No, instead he asked us a question. “Do you know how many times you have been in the ER for this headache?” I tried to answer, tried to count up the time’s and give him the exact reasons we had come in… The first time they found the tumor, then there was the broken disk in your back from the fall, and when the gamma knife didn’t take care of the tumor we had to come back in and they scheduled a craniotomy. He stopped me before I got the second one out though, and repeated “Do you know how many times you have been in for this headache?” A lot… I guess.
They sent us home with a prescription for percoset. You were miserable, pissed and embarrassed. I was shocked, that the doctor never even bothered to see you, and that the PA would treat you like a drug addict looking for a fix. I always believed you that there was something there, never doubted it. I can’t deny though that whenever a doctor told us that the CT showed nothing I was relieved. I just didn’t want there to be tumor again. I was just so hopeful that it was gone, and that you would keep getting better. That is one of the things I feel most guilty about now. I could have and should have been a better advocate in that. I should have tried to get them to look further, to find what it was.
It was a couple of days later at a regular appointment with Dr Collins, your oncologist, that you found out that each CT the ER had done was done without contrast. He said you never do a CT without contrast when you are looking for a brain tumor, all that would show up without contrast was a brain bleed. Two days later you were scheduled for an MRI, and a day later we found out that the tumor was back and inoperable.
I really hate that our last Mothers Day memory is that. I hate so much that you aren’t here, it still hurts every day, and in so many ways. I miss you!
I love you !
Today, Tomorrow & Always!
deminimis Uncategorized