Hello all,
First I want to say to all I wish you the best of luck on your journey. I feel patients and care givers of cancer are the strongest people on the planet.
Our experience began Dec 22nd 2023. My husband of 40 years was rushed to the hospital with what we thought was a ruptured hernia. He had emergency surgery where doctors found a tumor the size of a doughnut. When my husband woke from surgery, the doctor told us about the tumor and added that it had spread to his liver and lungs and that he had approximately 1-3 years to live. We spent Christmas and New Years in the hospital and we went home Jan 10th to deal with the diagnosis. In April we had a house fire that not only destroyed our home but also my business which was right next to our home. We lost everything we owned, 4 of our pets as well as my ability to support us. We were displaced as we were renting the property and our landlord had no insurance. We were set up in a hotel by the red cross (thank God for them!). Then in May my husband was knocked down in the parking lot during a dispute and broke his hip. This was a major blow to his treatment. It wasn't until August that we were finally approved for housing and moved into a gated community. Now we could get back to the business of chemo and all that entails, however after almost a year and 12 rounds of chemo, we weren't seeing any changes, good or bad. So we moved to another clinic hoping for better results. With the new doctor and a slight change to the administration of cancer fighting drugs, after just 3 months of treatment, his markers shrunk by more than half but he was still experiencing a good amount of pain not only in his gut but in his hip as well. Our pain management nurse was, well, not exactly empathetic to his plight. She felt he wasn't using his short term pain meds, decided he was selling them instead and cut him off completely. She was not concerned with withdrawl symptoms or the pain. She began to treat him like a junkie off the street and despite my best efforts to reason with her, would not budge. My husband went thru a week of this pain and trauma to his system until we finally could get in to see the doctor and discuss the pain med issue with the pain management team. When we finally were able to see our nurse, she was steadfast in her judgement and only issued and prescription for pain meds because I was physically in her face demanding she do right by her oath as a nurse and do something. She would not prescribe the medication he had been taking since this started and instead sent in a script for meds that were loaded with fillers and had the least amount of pain killer possible. As well she almost delighted in reminding my husband he should not get his hopes up, that he was going to die from the cancer and that he should prepare for it. This was more battle than he has in him. He lost all hope and is now on hospice. My heart is broken and there is a large part of me filled with anger for this woman who essentially drove him to hospice, effectively killing him. I am so lost. I know he is afraid and so am I. I have to sit and watch him slip away from me and there is nothing I can do. I am his caregiver now so I can spend as much time with him as possible. We are isolated in this. People feel bad and say kind things but they really don't know what this does to your life. Add the fact that we went thru a devastating fire that took every memory, every piece of our life away from us, we are in need of people that understand. I am hoping we can find that here.
Well, that is our story. I will pray for those here and please pray for us as well.
