Devastated

We scheduled an appointment with Erica’s neurologist just to be sure that we were covering all perspectives of the brain situation (perhaps one day I’ll write a retrospect of her first experience with the neurologist and the amazing outcome of that episode). We truly expected the neurologist to say that Erica’s condition was related to the tumors or brain swelling and would improve if we took care of those. Unfortunately, that may not be the case. Over the past two years of radiation, medication and the cancer itself, Erica’s brain has been significantly damaged and is failing throughout. This has real potential to be the root cause of her challenged cognition and mobility and clarifies why her symptoms reflect those of dementia. As mentioned in the prior post, this horrible reality is devastating to Erica. Treatments, the cancer and time alone will continue to worsen the condition. We are stunned, sad and facing very difficult decisions as we anticipate more radiation on existing tumors.

I did not expect that our second blog post would be this difficult. I nearly dropped the whole project knowing that they may only get harder. But we recognize that we have been praying to understand what is causing Erica’s condition. This news brings us closer to an answer to that prayer and closer to decisions and plans accordingly. So carry on.

Our youngest son, Bram, returned from college yesterday. This is not the circumstance we planned to greet him with. As we share his mom’s news, he brings joy to her with a big hug, and then goes on to tell us of the shenanigans of his most recent work shift. We are all laughing out loud and immediately experience the mood-changing truth that laughter is the best medicine.