Hello All,

Coreen passed away peacefully 8:45 Friday night.  Her race is done, and the victory won.  Once the arrangements have been made the details will be posted.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers...

Ryan and kids,

Coreen's physical condition has slipped overnight and now sleeps most of the day.  She often isn't aware of people coming and going. As a result I would like to encourage people check in with the family prior to going in to see her as she is resting.

Thanks again for your thoughts and prayers.

Today Coreen was moved to the Agape Hospice; she has a private room that is comfortable.  In recent days her motor functions have been slowing down and has needed more care.  She felt that the time was right to move to the Hospice.  Thanks again for each ones love, thoughts, care, and heart felt prayers. 

The Family

Just a quick update:

Coreen made it back home late this afternoon.  And thanks for all those who have posted comments... They are greatly appreciate.  Also Coreen's strength is limited so she hasn't been responding to txt's due to the volume of them. But please know that we appreciate your thoughts and prayers.  Feel free to txt Ryan or the Grama's.

Coreen was admitted yesterday to hospital; the palliative home care nurse & doc feared that she had a more serious problem than she normally has with her bowels. She arrived by patient transport (no sirens ambulance) and it took a while to get her shuffled around, some degree of pain control and an X-ray done. The xray did not reveal a perforation and that much of the abdominal concerns were just more of the same except for increased pain initially.

Bony pain has also increased since admitted so they changed the type of pain medication so she is now on fentanyl and playing catch up as happens when changing types. Now since she in hospital anyway they are changing again to methadone which is often used in palliative settings and which requires hospital to set up.

She does have another complications, in that she has shingles. As a result she is in isolation and in a negative pressure room. Not a big deal at home but we need to be considerate of their rules, masks etc and maybe keeping visits not so many initially while lesions heal and rules lighten up.

Ryan

2013/Jan/11
No More Chemo

This techno- peasant has just realized that I can't reply directly to people who respond to my blog by sending a response privately back to their email because it is blocked. A heartfelt thanks to each response sent!

This week found us back at the oncologist on Tuesday; no more chemo is planned. It was an easy decision to stop the current regime which is clearly not working; without any further evidence required from other imaging. The evidence being numerous sub-cutaneous lesions and other tumors which have grown over time on this regime and pain which continues to grow. The next possibility was another harsher chemo, but both the doctor and I felt I would not manage it well seeing I am barely managing things currently.

My tummy has not been doing well this week, but it is still "managing".  I have almost no appetite. The tumor from my back is pressing on innervation to my gut which makes it hard pressed to move food through normally. There is strong suspicion that there is tumor in my gut which also doesn't help. Use of high doses of pain killers also adds to the picture...

At the moment I think we are in a bit of a holding pattern until the "next thing" arises. The pain has actually improved in the last 2 days, but unsure why. Without chemo to help with symptom control we do have other drugs to use or radiation should the need arise.

Thanks again for ongoing support.

Happy Holidays!!
2012-Dec-30

It would appear that this blogger has taken a serious holiday. Sorry for the silence and I certainly didn't mean to leave off with me still in hospital!! No wonder I keep hearing rumours that I am "in hospital".

So the rest of the story is I was discharged from hospital on November 16th. Basically the days have been up and down. Fairly quickly I was able to eat more solid food. Food has never been so good:)  In order to do more chemo a scan needed to show marked improvement over the previous scan. A satisfactory CT scan was done Nov. 28th that showed the appendicitis had "calmed down" although the appendix was still not normal. To be sure antibiotics were continued for a couple more weeks. The second round of chemo was done Nov. 30. It appeared to be an easy round but a couple days after I had a sudden, severe pain flare. These happen occasionally and may or may not be related to the chemo.

Another round of chemo was completed Dec. 19 and was also uneventful at the time. However, by the weekend (Dec. 22nd) pain had increased drastically. Fortunately, I have been placed on the palliative home care list so was able to survive the weekend and then a nurse came by on Monday and she was able to get orders through the on-call palliative care doctor to double my pain medications. Seriously, my long-acting narcotics were doubled which means I was previously crazily under-dosed. I have done reasonably well since, but still have moments a couple times a day where my pain is not well-managed. I'm sure we'll address this next visit.

About the palliative home care team.... it is a team of nurses and docs who are available 24/7. They are extremely good at what they do, readily available and they do house calls:) I am really happy about being on their list in spite of the "palliative" implications.

We sure appreciate every thought and visit and card and phone call and prayer. Thanks again for all your on going support. Thanks to any who have posted replies to my blog. I thought all replies were going to my email only but some stay on the blog website. I only just figured out how to read all the relplys. Thanks to each one. For anyone wanting to reply to the blog rest assured that nothing will be posted unless I got permission first...