| It is truly hard to believe... but... |
Subject: It is truly hard to believe... but... by bogus on 2008/5/31 16:46:44 Five years ago today, my older brother, Roy, passed away after a nearly two year battle with brain cancer. He was 52. CRASH - you may want to stop reading this. If you want to talk, I am more than willing. He was diagnosed August 1, 2001. His symptoms first started to appear in May, as he started to realized what he was experiencing. His first symptoms were just not feeling mentally right. His doctors attributed it to the sometimes long term effects of anethesia. Come mid-July, he has his first episode. He was parked when, for the lack of a better term, he phased out. He lost awareness (consciousness is unknown) and all he remembered was hearing loud music. He snapped out after an unknown amount of time and drove himself to the hospital. After a 3+ hour wait, he simply left. He felt better and they were not being all that speedy about seeing him. The next even was about 10 days later. He was this time at a Boy Scout meeting (he was a troop leader). He was talking to one of the dads (and a friend) when the second such event occured. Again, loud music and gone. This time, though, his friends took him straight to the local hospital (which is right across the street from where the scout meeting was being held). They did an MRI. The next morning we got the result... brain tumours in the left forward part of the brain - the speach center. He was transferred to the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center for a consult and they scheduled a biopsy. That was originally set for late September, with surgury to follow. The tumours were growing way too fast, so they brought the biopsy up to Sept 13, and then canceled the biopsy as a separate event. The tumors were too ingrained in the grey matter to remove. The death warrant had been signed. Over the next 18 months, they did radiation and chemo with little positive effect. He acquired other problems... incontenance, Parkinson like symptoms, vision problems, depression... The tumors did relent for a while in early 2003, but then came back with a vengance by April. He died today, in 2003. Well, today is a bit nebulious. He was alive when my sister-in-law went to bed, but 10 hours later, he was cold. In April, they stopped chemo and gave him 6 months. There is one nasty little detail that I have learned about these predictions - change their measure from whatever to one less. So if it's months, it's actually weeks. I didn't want my family to be shocked, so I warned them about this... and followed, "For his sake, he won't make it to June." The last thing I wanted was my nephew to associate Christmas with his fathers death. I pretty much nailed it... as sad as it was, his personal hell was over. I moved here to Torrance in 2004. Sometime in late 2004, not long after returning from Hawai'i, bastet and I were talking, and I shared this with her: "I just realized what isn't right. I don't have Roy to share these events with. Whenever one of us went on a trip, we would tell the other what we did, where we went, where we ate, that sorta thing... and I don't have him to tell that too anymore." I didn't realize how much we did talk, even after he had become sick. In many ways, he died that day when the tumors first appeared, on others, he is still alive in well. Whatever the case my ultimately be, he is better off and in no pain. Sorry for the long post... Rest in Peace, brother... |
