Arg…

Well, the past few days have been interesting.

On Wednesday, Tasha and I were having a quiet evening in, and shortly after I posted about seeing The Last Samurai we got a phone call from Tasha’s brother. He said that Tasha’s grandma was in the hospital, which is always alarming since she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Unfortunately, Pekin Hospital is the closest to their house so it was the default choice for immediate attention. She was having severe (read as screaming and thrashing waves of) head and neck pain, and naturally the incompitent nurses were displaying their skill at being complete wastelands.

Jeanie was all but begging us to check her out and drive her to Methodist, where her specialist resides. We did so, and 45 minutes later after Pekin Hospital collected her paperwork, my Saturn spirited us away to Methodist at Mach 7. When they found a room for her an hour later, she was getting taken care of.

We eventually left the hospital around 2 am or so. Tasha took a half-day off work today to go up and check on her… we were all concerned that the cancer may have spread to her brain. Interestingly, this is not immediately the case. About two weeks back, Jeanie fell down twice. She took pain medicine, and claimed that she was just banged up. According to my last update from Tasha, they claim to have found multiple spine fractures, including one compound neck fracture. They also found several fractures in her skull.

The cancer, which spread into her bones in November, has caused them to be very brittle and she’s been rolling around for two weeks or so with these breaks. She is being medicated for the pain, tomorrow they’re going to do some radiation treatment to beat back the cancer so she can heal up some. She’s hanging in there with a major concoction of pain medication for the time being.

This is not what I consider good news, but if the cancer spreads to her brain that would mean imminent death. This just means some treatment before she’s back to hanging around her house. I do have to say, watching someone in that much pain (which was a 10 on the scale they have in the hospital, according to a nurse) and being able to do nothing is very hard.

Tasha is holding up like a champ, I have no idea how she’s doing it… I’ve been moderately upset about all of this and I’ve only known Jeanie for a few years. I hated missing Karate tonight, but I had to take care of my family first. Tasha’s staying tonight up there with Jeanie, hopefully she will be relieved by her brother or Jeanie’s daughter-in-law soon.

I know that growing old and dying is just a part of being alive, but that doesn’t make it easy. Tasha told me to thank everyone that are providing prayers and well wishes, it means a great deal to all involved.