You can keep track of progress at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fighting-Cancer/123805111044731
I thought long and hard about whether to post this today or not. I was going to wait until we had more information on where things are going, but the simple truth is that as far as the immediate future is concerned, we already know. We have contacted the majority of the family, and I think it’s only fair that her friends and supporters know what is happening as well.
I apologize if you are family and just learning about this for the first time. I have tried to contact everyone, but that is just not possible.
As you all know Jenny has been in the hospital with Valley fever caused pneumonia. She has been very sick, unable to eat and has been refusing her feeding tube because of sever nausea. She also developed a really bad pain in her back that she was convinced was a muscle pull. She has had good days, but her improvement is only slight and they could not figure out what was happening. Well, as of yesterday, we now know what is going on.
Jenny underwent CAT and PET Scans last week in order to see if there was any activity with the cancer. The results were, simply put, devastating. The cancer is not only active it’s progressive and starting to re-invade some of the area’s that the doctors had been able to shrink it away from, including her spinal column again. There are nodules on her lung that seem to be active and there is lymph node growth as well.
The word, direct from her oncologist, was that there is no possible treatment. There was supposed to be a meeting on Thursday, but since we essentially forced the teams hand when we began suspecting they were keeping something from us I am not sure that is going happen now. We have already started meeting with some of them, like palliative care and we will be meeting with the hospice coordinator tonight sometime. We have no timeline, and I am not sure I want one.
Right now it looks like she will be entering a palliative care program designed to make her as comfortable as possible and to deal with the inevitable emotional crisis. The decision made today is that she will try and come home for hospice care, staying here as long as we are able to care for her. There are some prerequisites that she will have to meet before that can come to pass. If she is unable to come home we will be placing her with one of Hospice facilities in the valley.
So there you have it.
Jenny has fought this fucking insidious disease for nearly four years, and according to the medical team that fight is nearing the end. Yesterday was the hardest day of my life. I am very angry at the way the doctors, including her brilliant oncologist, handled this thing. They have known this for some time, yet they hid it from us. The only reason we know now is because I caught some discrepancies in a report the rounding doctor gave us. Sharon and I called her primary oncologist and told him not to play games with us. He didn’t.
After finding out the truth, my next task was to tell Jennifer, because she had no idea. I am not even going to go into that. Suffice it to say that it was heartbreaking.
If anyone has questions or wished to speak with us just shoot me a message and I will give you my phone number if you do not already have it.
Jenny is resting as comfortable as possible. Her mental state is exactly what you might think, though she and her mother did discuss plans for after this is over. Jenny has expressed her wishes and we will follow them as best we can. When the time comes I will release those and advise everyone what follows.
Jenny has been a strong young lady for her entire life. She has battled and kept cancer at bay for longer than I thought possible, and she has done it with a sense of humor and a love of life that is astounding. Now that she is coming to the end of that battle I can only think of the strength and love she has shown us all. I will mourn, but I will also celebrate my daughter.
