Runaway Train

It’s been a while since I have posted, so I wanted to provide an update to all my readers and the wonderful people who have supported us these last two years. When last I wrote, we’d moved out of our apartment and Dempsey was completing his cardiac rehab. He was gaining strength and feeling better every day. His doctors were encouraging, the crisis was behind us, and we planned to spend 2018 settling into his retirement and doing the traveling we’d long been planning.

I am fortunate that my work is mobile. I can write and work with clients wherever we hang our hats. Last year I had a big birthday, and I was eager to make this a decade in which I crossed my remaining major goals off my bucket list. I’d spent many years raising kids, foster kids, and helping to raise our nieces after the passing of Dempsey’s sister. I homeschooled our son, and helped homeschool grandchildren. I loved every minute (including the times I was tearing out my hair), but I was ready to move on. In particular, I wanted to travel. Dempsey and I have traveled fairly extensively in North America, but never overseas. It was time. His cancer diagnosis, of course, put us on a different trajectory for 2017. We spent most of the year in Arizona at Cancer Treatment Center of America, then in August he had a near-fatal heart attack.

In January 2018, as Dempsey was finishing up rehab, I took advantage of the lull in our schedule to have my annual medical tests. Among those was a mammogram. A few days after that first mammogram, the radiologist called me back for a second test. Dempsey sat in the waiting room, and when the testing was done, they guided us both back to a small conference room. “Maybe,” said my husband, “they are just going to tell you everything was normal.” “Nah,” I replied. “If that were the case, we’d be driving off into the sunset right now.” And in fact, the news was bad.

The mammogram showed I had carcinoma in situ, a very early stage breast cancer located in a milk duct in my left breast. There were several needle biopsies that confirmed the diagnosis. As breast cancer goes, I was lucky. In March, I had a lumpectomy, and genetic testing showed it was a non-aggressive malignancy, unlikely to recur. I did not need chemotherapy or radiation, but because it was hormone-receptor positive, my oncologist put me on a five-year course of the drug Tamoxifen. I had no apparent side effects from the medication.

Still, I never really felt well. My energy was low and I couldn’t seem to get back to my usual active self. In February, while visiting my son, Dempsey and I had come across a Segway park. I had always wanted to try one, and all went well until I fell off an obstacle and ended up in the Emergency Room with a major concussion. I actually lost almost two hours, asking Dempsey and my son (who rushed to the hospital) where I was, and what had happened. The ER physician suggested I be very careful for the rest of the year, so as to avoid the problems encountered by NFL players. One concussion is problematic, but two in a row can scramble your brains permanently. When he did a CT scan of my neck, he mentioned there was a large nodule on my thyroid.

So, back in Austin, I saw a thyroid surgeon who did more needle biopsies, and found the nodule was not malignant. Such a relief – one kind of cancer was really all I felt I could handle. Still, I wanted to be sure my thyroid was functioning properly, so I went to see an endocrinologist. Her testing showed my thyroid was fine, but there was the likelihood of significant problems with my liver.

As these months passed, we hung out at the homes of our kids, who were incredibly loving and supportive. Aiden, our five-year-old nephew, told us he wanted us to live in his house forever. His parents were probably less enthusiastic, but all our brood were there for us.

Dear friends with whom we’d shared an RV when our kids were younger had bought a vintage Airstream, now sitting in storage. They suggested we borrow it, so we headed to California and picked it up and brought it back to Austin. We found a nice park with a pool, and a playground and duckpond for Aiden. But boy, was it hot. Austin is having perhaps the hottest summer on record.

Meanwhile, Dempsey completed the process of retiring from his job at Austin State Hospital. He couldn’t go back, and he was ready, but it was emotional for him. He’d been there ten years, and had made friends who meant a great deal to him. He loved the patients, as well. While Dempsey processed all that, I drove down to Big Bend and spent time with friends. I returned in time for Aiden’s parents’ wedding on June 3rd.

In July, Dempsey’s cardiologist pronounced his heart clear and healthy. Meanwhile, my gastroenterologist sent me for a variety of tests on my liver. He didn’t like what he saw on the sonagram, so he sent me back for a CT scan.

Determined to leave behind the Texas heat and humidity, we hitched up our Airstream and headed toward our favorite little town in New Mexico, eager for cooler temperatures, hot springs, the beautiful river and all our friends here.

On a Friday afternoon as we were headed west, my doctor called me, alarmed. They had found a blood clot in my liver, and it needed immediate attention. He wanted me to see a surgeon and a hematologist, urgently. Dempsey and I looked at each other, said a little prayer, and tuned in to our collective intuition. We would have to find new specialists in Austin, or we could find them in New Mexico. We decided to keep driving.

Monday morning I began the process of finding doctors here. After a week and a half of missed connections and confusing signals, (“Yes, we take your insurance; oops, no we don’t) we drove to Albuquerque and I went into the University of New Mexico Medical Center through their Emergency Room. It was a 30-hour ordeal, but I ended up with excellent medical care.

UNMMC is a teaching hospital, and the doctors enjoyed the medical mystery I presented. My gallbladder was inflamed, but I wasn’t really sick enough to be having a gall bladder attack. They decided the gall bladder inflammation was caused by its proximity to my liver. Blood clots in the portal vein of the liver are most often caused by cirrhosis, which I don’t have. The second likely cause is cancer. So they did surgery, putting a big tube down my throat (which is still sore) all the way to my small intestine and up into the common bile duct. They sent down a scalpel (to enlarge the opening to the bile duct), a basket-like tool to scoop out a couple of gallstones they found, and a camera to carefully examine all my organs for signs of cancer. When I woke up from the general anesthetic, I felt as though I’d been beaten with a baseball bat, but we knew I didn’t have cancer.

In fact, the hematologist determined this blood clot was caused by Tamoxifen, the drug that was supposed to buy me some extra insurance – just a few percentage points – against any potential recurrence of the breast cancer. They hooked me up to IV Heparin to thin my blood, then sent me home with a prescription for six months of Xarelto. They estimate my body will absorb the blood clot within six months or so. Meanwhile, I’ll be wrapped in cotton wool. No  long walks through the mountains, no riding down the river on a tube. Any internal or external injury could be disastrous.

My word for this year has been “Surrender.” Last year Dempsey and I sucked it up and did what we had to do. He endured life-threatening treatments and I was there at his side through it all. This year really just seemed gratuitous. Seriously, God? Is there some lesson we’re supposed to be learning here, and if so, What?

But clearly we are not driving the train. I am a big believer in manifesting, and I’m known among my friends for my manifesting magic. Trust me, I did not consciously manifest this. So finally we decided, we’re just along for the ride. We may at some point understand the purpose of this, or maybe we won’t. Either way, there’s no jumping off this train. We just have to wait until it pulls into a station.

Meanwhile, I am gradually recovering. I still sleep two-thirds of the time, but I am regaining strength. We’ve moved our official headquarters to the Houston area, where my oldest son has lots of room for us, and where his family is close by. We plan to be back in Texas every three or four months to spend a few weeks with our kids and grandkids. Right now, we’re comfortable in New Mexico. In fact, we just left the hot tub, where we lay watching the night sky and the palm trees blowing in the wind.

Although I don’t have the faintest notion why our year has been hijacked like this, there have been some important lessons along the way. I’ve been thinking a lot about those, and I’ll share them next time.

 

(Photograph courtesy of MaxPixel.com)