Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Thank you for the things you do!

Thank you for all the pawyers from fellow bloggers for my mom. Special thank you to Charlie the big dog for the button on his web site. She is still in quite a bit of pain but is managing. Dad takes her to her radiation treatment every morning and then on to work. She has treatments every weekday until May 10th. The good (?) note in all of this is that the medicine she is on takes away all her appetite so I get a lot of leftovers and she gets to lose weight. The down side is no barkpark yet. Mom has beat cancer once before so I know she can do it again. I will keep you posted on any news.

C-K-C

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Serious blog

I want to apologize to my mom for thinking she was lazy and didn't want to take me to the bark park. I am going to let mom tell you about the serious turn in her health cause I don't know those med-co terms..

Charlie's Mom here-

For the last month I have been either home with a severe pain in my back or in the hospital. It started out in the middle of March. I just thought it was a strained back along with arthritis. After a week home and in bed, I was no better off so I went to an urgent care facility not too far from my house. The doctor gave me some muscle relaxants and pain killers, took an x-ray and sent me home with the advise to see my primary care physician. I had yet another xray on while at my primary care that showed a hairline fracture of L5 (lower back). Still no letup from pain. Saturday, March 24th I couldn't even sit up on my own. Charlie's dad was out running errands so I called him to come home right away. After a series of calls, the long and short of it was, it would be faster to call an ambulence. They admitted me thru the emergency department. They took some more xrays of my back and this time it showed that the hairline fracture became a full blow-out and included L3 and L4. Whilst in hospital, I first had needle biopsy performed on me (By this darling physician who didn't look old enough to be driving a car!). I also had two MRIs (had to be fully sedated to do this because of my claustrophobia), full body scan, 4-6 head shots and a CTscan. The spinal guy (who I didn't like at all) told me that it might be cancerous. I asked to bring in my cancer doctor and the surgeon just ignored me so I simply called her myself. She was in the next morning, had looked at all the xrays, reports, etc. It appears that my breast cancer of 4 years ago had popped up in a different place (metastisized in my vertebra bones). The arimidex that I had been taking to prevent this was'nt doing its job. The cancer had become immune to that medication. The new stuff is injected into my bum once a month. Treatment for the bad vertebra is simple (well sort-of). The cartilage is scraped out between the two vertebrate, the vertibrate held open and "cement" put between the vertebrate to take the place of the missing cartelage.
In addition, when they did the cement job on my back, they stuck a needle round and heated it to kill cancer cells. They also removed the vertebra fragment that was resting against my spinal nerve. I had an appointment with the doctor today about radiation therapy. I will be taking radiation therapy 5 times a week (M-F) for at 2 weeks. This is to kill any cancer cells that are still around . Chemotherapy is not sceduled at this time so I won't loose all of my hair (thank doggness though I still have my wig). So things are not all good nor all bad. In the meantime, if you see a little old lady pushing a grey walker run down her . Well- enought for this sicky stuff. Back to Charlie!

C-K-C's mom Kathleen

See, See! I just knew you couldn't be faking it that long mom! Well'll

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Blogging "vacation"

Charlie won't be able to blog for a little while. Something has come up with her mom and her dad doesn't know how to blog. Charlie will try to check in with everybody's blog and maybe leave a comment from time to time.

Charlie's Mom