Long Version - A Series of Very Unfortunate Events

I don't even know where to start, so I guess I will start with the back story to give you all some context. If you want the short story, too bad, you are getting it all. After all, they say writing about a bad experience can be cathartic. Special note: I think this is the first time have ever used that word in a sentence. On Friday afternoon, April 19th, just before school was out, I received a phone call from my sister, Candice. Ironically, that was also Good Friday. Candice said two words that took me a while to fully understand, "Jimmie died". Jimmie is my older brother by 14 months but with both my parents in ill health his death was the last thing I was expecting.

Earlier that morning Crescence was having some minor abdominal pain. I say minor but she is so tough that her minor pain would have me bed ridden for days. So, of course she goes to work and when I tell her we need to leave for the Tri-Cities to be with my family she doesn't hesitate to go with me. This choice, as I will explain later, may have saved her life. (BTW - I apologize to all of my previous English teachers ahead of time for my grammar and punctuation errors.)

We get to my sister's house and are visiting with mom, dad, Candice, and Catrina. Crescence is still in pain but thought it was probably just an ovarian cyst. However, she does not sleep well that night. On Saturday she goes shopping with her mother and I spend the day at my mother's helping around the house. Mom was very engaged with us, talking up a storm; including talking about our annual summer camping trip to the coast. We spend time looking at old family photos, you know, the kind that are from something called film that you have to take to a specialized business to have them processed. At one point mom was sitting in her chair and screamed, "HELP ME, HELP ME". She thought she was falling through space. She quickly came out of it but then started feeling dizzy. My sister, Catrina, is a nurse and since mom is diabetic checked her blood sugar. She was normal and seemed to be feeling ok. We ate pizza, talked some more, and finished with a little house cleaning.

While all this is going on, Crescence was hurting more so she decided to make an appointment with urgent care at 5:40 PM. I ended of taking her and at urgent care they ruled out a UTI but felt it could be appendicitis and sent us to the emergency room. We chose to go to Kadlec in Richland because Catrina is a nurse there. The ER doc, after a quick exam, suspected appendicitis as well and ordered a CT scan to determine how far along so they could determine how soon to do surgery. Oh, and keep in mind the Easter is the next day and we were planning a big family dinner since so many of us were in town for my brother. Now we are bummed out because  Crescence wouldn't be able to make her famous company potatoes.

Then life takes a wicked turn. As we are waiting for the CT scan, Catrina calls me in a panic telling me the paramedics are performing CPR on mom and she doesn't think she is going to make it. However, they worked their magic and after over 10 minutes of CPR they transport her to the closest hospital, which I am sure you can imagine, is not Kadlec. It is TRIOS which is a 20 minute drive from Kadlec.

So there I am with my wife who as imminent surgery coming up and I need to go to a different hospital. Thankfully, Art, Crescence's, father comes to be with her while I break a few traffic laws, ok - several traffic laws, to be with mom. As the family is just stunned at what is going with us in the last 28 hours we wait and pray for a miracle. The CT scan was supposed to be done within about 30 minutes of the order with a diagnosis within another 30 minutes, so I am thinking I have at least an hour before anything would be done with Crescence. Furthermore, the ER doc is feeling like surgery would probably not happen until the next day.

I call Crescence every 30 minutes waiting for the results. An hour and a half goes by after the CT scan with no results yet. By now they are letting us go see mom, so my sisters, dad, and I go into see her. She is intubated but her heart is beating on its own. The big concern now is her brain since she was without oxygen for so long. The church deacon comes in to pray with us and as she is doing this all I can think is I need to get back to my wife. Some how my gut is telling me the appendicitis is further along than they thought otherwise we would have heard something by know. When I get back into the room I can tell that Art has been crying. Crescence tells me to sit down. While I was gone she made the doctor tell her what was wrong.

Turns out her appendix is just fine but her ovaries are sporting a new set of 3 tumors that are each the size of a grapefruit. Hell, if he had said the size of grapes I don't think it would have mattered - this is not good. Furthermore, he believes they have signs that they might be malignant and refers us to the OB GYN - Dr. Tuck. I will start by saying she is an amazingly compassionate doctor.

The next step is to get a full blood work up and ultra sound to get a better picture of the fruit that is now growing in my wife's abdomen. Those who know me know how I feel about fruit and vegetables. Crescence is also admitted to the hospital for pain management because, as tough as she is, it is starting to get to her. At this same time, in the other hospital my mom is stable enough to move into ICU and my sisters, two of the best sisters one could ever have, maintain a 24 x 7 vigil over my mother while I do the same for Crescence. Chase, meanwhile, is in the caring hands of Crescence's mother, Camille. While Chase has an understanding of death we are not sure he understands the finality of it. For example, he doesn't really accept that Keiko is dead. After all, he sees Keiko every time he watches Free Willy. I can't imagine he can comprehend what Crescence is going through when I certainly can't.

Early Sunday morning we meet with Dr. Tuck who gives us the bad news with the details about the tumors and how they are attached to part of the colon. She shares that she has been in touch with Dr. Swisher, Gynecological Oncologist at the University of Washington Medical Center. Dr. Swisher has seen the images and blood work and wants her team to schedule a surgery to remove the tumors as soon as possible. Side Story - Dr. Swisher is the oncologist that worked directly on, my dear friend, Kim Meche's ovarian cancer over six years ago. Had we been at home when this happened we would not have even thought about UWMC and Dr. Swisher's team. God's hand lead us here. Dr. Swisher is now the department head and is not doing as many surgeries these days but we have number 2, Dr. Gray and no, I haven't used the Gray's Anatomy joke with her.

By Monday we are making arrangements to travel directly to Seattle to get treatment started. Dr. Tuck comes in to see us off giving Crescence a hug while shedding a tear before giving me a hug as well. By the way, it seems the entire staff at both hospitals know about the weekend of the Morris' series of very unfortunate events and everyone was very accommodating to us.

Meanwhile, we are praying for a miracle for my mom. Her heart was actually improving and close to normal, so it was time to warm her up and remove the sedation to see if she would wake up. To make a long story short, she was not waking up and the EEG showed very little brain activity; even after playing several different versions of "Amazing Grace". Dad had to make the difficult decision to remove life support and let her go see Jesus. It was good timing too because Jesus just awoke from the dead the day before. Crescence and I were able to say our goodbye to one of the most loving and faithful mothers on the planet. She had to be to live with my father.

The drive to Seattle was a little surreal. When I was in the Navy and dating Crescence I made that drive countless times to be with her on the weekends. To be making this trip all these years later for this particular reason was and is very difficult to comprehend. My love for her has grown stronger every year and I truly believe there is no person on the planet more compatible for me. She is strong, loving, caring, and all those other adjectives used to describe the world's best wife. We shared tears along the way, some laughs, and some quiet reflection time preparing for our meeting with Dr. Gray.

Before we met with Dr. Gray we assumed there were only two possible outcomes - benign tumors or malignant tumors. Apparently there is a third option called "Borderline Tumors". I was a little stunned and listened as carefully as my ADHD brain would allow and even took copious notes the Mr. Olin would be proud of. She felt there is very little chance the tumor were completely benign because of their physical characteristics.  However, she wasn't convinced that they were fully malignant either because of Crescence's blood work. Chances it they are borderline. If they are borderline tumors and she can remove them in one piece then we should be done. No further treatment would be necessary. The tumors are mainly attached to the ovaries but they are also attached to her colon so this complicates things a little. I say "a little" because there is a much more troublesome complication. By the way, we are not even talking about the "what if's" of the malignant tumors because that doesn't matter at this point. The damn things must come out either way.

Major Complication: Turns out the Crescence has a genetic mutation called Trothrombin G20210A Heterozygous, thanks Camille, that makes her susceptible to blood clots. Sure enough, during her hysterectomy she had a blood clot that became a pulmonary embolism. But that is not the worse of it. To make matters worse she is also allergic to two of the three drugs used to prevent blood clots during surgery. The one she is not allergic to is not used any longer because once it is in the blood stream to thin the blood there is no way to reverse it quickly in case of severe bleeding. The doctors are coming up with a plan to deal with that, at least we hope. Crescence had a CT scan of the lungs to look for blood clots and that came back clean. Today we go back for a more thorough scan of her veins to see if there are any sneaking around.

So here are the latest details. Surgery is scheduled for 10:00 am on Thursday. During the surgery they will send tissue to pathology to determine malignancy. If it is benign they close her up and send her home. OK, not home right away, the surgery takes 3-3 1/2 hours with a three to four day inpatient stay. Then six weeks of home rest. Now, if its deemed to be borderline then they will look deeply through her abdomen for any other signs of growths and they will take lymph nodes for evaluation. Then the seal her up and send her home. For the worse case scenario of malignancy they do the deep cavity search, lymph nodes, and put in a port for chemo. The doctor won't even talk to us about that process and we are not asking.

Well, this has been cathartic. WOW, I used that word twice in one day. I think everyone is caught up. I will try to post updates to this blog as they happen so that I am not sending out a million text messages. Please feel free to pass this on to other friends of ours but please be mindful of others.

Everyone wants to know what they can do to help. Right now we ask for your prayers. We will even take them from hopeful agnostics. We are so blessed to have so many friends who want to help and believe me we will ask for help when needed. When Kim Meche was fighting ovarian cancer she had a motto "Carry On" and she did just that up until the end. Our motto is going to be "Just Keep Swimming" from Finding Nemo. We are going against a strong current but with everyone's loving support and the grace of God we are going to keep swimming.

Feel free to leave messages to Crescence and I below.

Thanks,

Brian and Crescence