Fran's Journal Fran's Journey of Hope

The events of the past week have sure given me a lot to ponder on. It has been a reality check. To date I have been living in a weird world where things are happening to me but my brain protects me from believing they are happening to actually ME. I still think I will wake up from this and it just be a dream. A story that I have been telling everyone to just get attention.

Every time they do another test, I have to tell myself this is real. This is evidence that it is actually happening to ME. They can’t be getting so many scans and tests wrong. No-one is accidentally putting my name on the scan when it really is someone else. Even though I watched the guy doing the liver ultrasound and saw on the screen the tumors, I look at the report and wonder if he has reported on someone else and not me.

Yet the other side of my brain knows this is real. Is trying to process everything in a way that means I am dealing with it constructively and positively. That I can cope and face it and the implications.

It is a weird concept knowing that part of your body is on a destructive path that will mean you die. How do you know when you are dying? What does it feel like? How soon before you die do you realise that you are going to die? When are you living and when are you dying? When will they decide that the options to fight this are no longer effective? How will it feel for them to say “sorry, we can no longer do anything”? Will that happen after this chemo? How soon? Do I have months or will it be more than that to live? How do you prepare yourself?

The clinical side of my brain knows many of those answers, but the “me” side of the brain blocks the answers coming to be “me”. Through my years of nursing, I know that liver secondaries are a death sentence. Reality is that once there is liver involvement there is not a lot of hope and the cancer progress quite fast. And that is what we saw with me.

Back at the end of August (13 weeks ago), the initial CT Scan showed about 4 tumours in the liver that were 1 to 1.6 cm in size. The ultrasound 18 days later (mid September) showed that the largest tumour had doubled in size was about 3 cm in size (I have not been told how many more had developed by then). The ultrasound last week showed that I now have at least 10 tumours in the liver and the largest is 4.2 cm with some of the others 3 cm. At the time of starting chemo, my liver function was starting to suffer, but over the past few weeks has returned to near normal range.

From that we are working on the belief that before chemo started in late October the tumours got to a size significantly bigger than 4 cm and that the chemo has reduced the size. If we don’t assume that then it means my prognosis is even worse. We will have to wait patiently till March when the chemo finishes to see the actual effect of the chemo. But the rapid increase in size and number of tumours in the liver shows how fast the liver is effected and had I not started chemo, I would not be as well as I am now and probably would have only been given 6 months to live. The chemo is expected to buy my extra time. But how much?

My prayer is that this chemo is buying me some more time with significant improvement in wellness. I am selfish. I want to feel hungry again, to taste things, not feel nauseated by the thought of food and then nauseated if I don’t eat food. To be able to eat and drink because I feel like it rather than do it as chore because if I don’t I will get dehydrated or more nauseous. I want to go to the fridge and eat anything. And to feel excited about eating. I want to have the energy to get in the car and go for a drive, or go shopping or go and visit someone without spending hours before hand psyching myself up to go.  I want to have more padding on my bottom so that lying and sitting is not so painful and so that when I sit on the loo I can sit comfortable and not perch because it hurts to sit. I want to feel well, not whinging about feeling miserable all the time. I want to encourage other people rather than be mopey every time someone talks to me. To have every SMS I send saying having another good day. To be able to dream of things I am going to do in life. To see the kids grow up, get married, have more grandchildren. To be there for Mike not a daily burden on him. I want the world to stop being about ME.

But that is all in God’s hands. I don’t know what He has planned for me. But whatever it is He has also given me the equipment to cope and ride the storm. He asks me to be thankful for all things. And I have to pull myself up some days and start to list off all the things I have to be thankful for. And when I do that, I amaze myself how long I can get the list. Life is not all that bad. God is my Provider, my Rock and my Strength. He may not be my Healer, but that is okay as He is my Comforter. And He offers me the greatest prize of all. eternal life. And in that place I will be reunited with my mother, someone I have not seen for 33 years and that is so exciting. Also my sister, who died two and a half years ago. And many other precious people in my life. That is the hero’s welcome that I will get if I can go the distance. (if you turn your volume on, you will hear the song playing on this page)