Tuesday, February 4, 2014

When It Rains, It Pours

The In-Laws, who spent more than a month here in the fall taking care of me and mine, were both diagnosed with cancer in the months following their return home.

Mary was diagnosed with a very small breast tumor. Dennis was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Sheesh! That's a little too much for one family in one year!

Just as we experienced, they had a brief period of terror before settling into the process of treatment planning and now treatment. They are supremely calm individuals and have handled this in their usual way. At least from 3,000 miles away and through the conduit of Wonderful Wife that's how it has seemed.

Mary had a lumpectomy in December and then started four and a half weeks of radiation right after the New Year. She is now finished. With her usual humor, she says that she is feeling some fatigue but that it gives her an excuse to curl up in a blanket. Now she will take an aromatase inhibitor (Letrozole or Arimidex) for five years.

Dennis has had one hormone injection (testosterone suppression, Trelstar) after which they will wait a month to see how the tumor responds. I think the plan then is either more hormone injections (if it is responding well to them) or radiation.

Wonderful Wife is also handling it quite well. Her attitude, like it was with my cancer, is that she won't worry (too much) until someone tells her there is something to be worried about. Interestingly, that's not how she is about anything else in life! :) Anything less serious than cancer she can worry about better than anyone!

We would normally see the In-Laws during our February visit to the west, but due to treatment they are unlikely to be at their winter home. We'll see them this summer, but we'll miss them until then.

[I started this blog with anonymity in mind, but I started to find the blacked out faces humorous and now I consider the anonymity sort of a running joke. Dennis and Mary gave me permission to post this news, and also told me they do not require anonymity. Thus the real names.]

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