The latest news

Lung cancer.

Adenocarcinoma, Stage IV.

Inoperable.

Incurable.

Ugly words. Scary words.

Words you never, ever want to hear.

Words that were spoken to my mother earlier in the week.

It started off a couple of months ago, when Mom noticed she was losing her stamina. She was no longer able to walk at the mall with my father. Then she started having serious trouble trying to breathe. They thought it was pneumonia, but she hadn't run a fever, and with pneumonia -- even so-called "walking pneumonia" -- one runs at least a bit of fever.

Finally Mom broke down and went to the minor emergency clinic because she couldn't breathe and felt like she was suffocating. The doctor took a chest x-ray, and discovered she had a large amount of fluid in the right side of her chest, and that was keeping the lung from inflating.

The x-ray also showed a 5 cm by 6.5 cm mass in her upper right chest. That's where all the fluid came from. So they tapped her chest and removed the fluid so she could breathe again, and took a sample for testing. They also did a biopsy of the mass at the same time.

The good news is that there weren't any cancer cells in the extracted fluid.

The MRI of her brain showed no suspicious spots, so it hadn't spread to there yet. More good news.

A not-so-good discovery came with the PET scan. (Don't ask me what the initials stand for, I have no idea and will have to look it up later.) The radioactively tagged sugar they injected her with revealed additional masses (smaller ones to be sure, but still unwelcome) in the adrenal gland, the lymph nodes in the center of her chest, and a small 1-2 cm mass on her bowel.

The doc has the first round of chemo scheduled for next Wednesday . . . except Mom's not sure she wants to even try it. She says that as bad as she feels now, if the chemo makes her feel any worse (and it very likely will), she doesn't want to be subjected to it. I think she ought to at least try one round of chemo, and then make a decision yea or nay. But it's her life and her decision, and what is right for one person won't be right for another.

Honestly, I don't know that I'd take the chemotherapy either, were I in her position. Walking across the room winds her badly, she has to stop for air every few words when she's talking, and even sitting on the toilet leaves her light-headed. If there's a chance the chemo side effects would make her feel even worse (and that's likely), well, that option isn't necessarily much of an option, especially since the odds apparently are that she'll only have 12-14 months, even with treatment.

Her sister's set it up for the doctor to call on Monday to talk to us about statistics, so if the odds are good, we might be able to get her to at least try one round of chemo. We'll see. I'm not sure she'll make it to Christmas if she declines treatment....