Back in the day our family used to make a paper chain to count down the days until an event was going to happen. It could have been the count down to the days until Christmas or the days until the end of the school year or the days to the start of a trip. We looked at it as something to which we would look forward.
Joyce had gone in for her latest PET scan and had an additional MRI included in the orders. It turns out that her latest treatments have not been able to keep her cancer at bay. The cancer has decided to set up camp and expand in the area it was and to send off some of its troops to other parts of her body as well. With that in mind Joyce has made the decision in consultation with her doctor that her path forward will be to undergo radiation treatments for her brain, where new cancer cells have occurred, and after that to start the process of entering hospice care. We don’t know how long any of this will take to play itself out and that is why our metaphoric chain will be as long as it takes to reach the end of this journey.
Joyce is comfortable and that has always been the goal throughout this process. Well, actually one of three goals. The first goal was to see if we could get the cancer to go away. The goals now are quality of life and pain management.
So, what you will find us doing on this part of Joyce’s journey is settling in, here at our Peaceful Pines oasis watching the flowers bloom, the birds flit, the ducks and swans on the lake, the deer graze and the occasional bear come to try to destroy Gary’s feeders. That is the quality of life that rests in the soul of Joyce. The pain will be medicinally managed to help her enjoy a hopefully long linked chain of good quality days.
Someone once told us that Joyce would know when it was time to make this kind of decision. Joyce feels the time is right. Now that she has made that decision she feels less burdened. And that bodes well for partially satisfying the goal of nurturing her quality of life.
