The day started at 5:20am for Maria. She decided to dedicate the next couple of hours to cleaning up her room, albeit with great difficulty. Gabi came in to her around 6:30am and helped immensely for the second hour.
We attended the kids' Thanksgiving Assembly, which was such a blessing to be part of. It went for about an hour-and-a-half, so Maria was quite tired by the end of it. Immediately afterwards we grabbed some lunch and headed straight for the hospital for her RT.
Maria had her RT (18/25) around 1:45pm. As she was walking to me to leave (she was about 5 metres away and directly outside the nurses station), her right knee gave way and she hit the floor quite hard, taking the impact with her knees (mostly the right). She was still holding onto the walker as she fell back onto her bottom. It was quite a shock to both of us.
Myself and one of the orderlies lifted her into a wheelchair after we all established she was otherwise okay. We put her into a bed and waited for the doctor to come to discuss. The short of it is that she has been admitted with the intention of trying to expedite a palliative care visit and the equipment at home, as well as possibly conducting another MRI of her spine to see what the situation is. Apart from a regression in her mobility, she is now experiencing some twitches in her right hand and small finger, which the radiation oncologist believes may be related to the tumour (but not convulsions) as it is sitting in the T1 position, which can effect the arm and hand.
The two main possibilities are that: (a) the radiation is causing a lot of swelling in the area in question (inside the spinal cord in a sensitive spot), which would lead to an increase in symptoms; or (b) the tumour is unresponsive to RT. We pray it's the former.
At this stage it is not believed to be related to the brain tumour. I spoke with our oncologist over the phone who is out of town (timing always seems to be bad) and he said that the neurosurgery team had viewed the scan and felt there was no real change except for some minor bleeding in the tumour, but didn't sound concerned. The radiation oncologist who admitted Maria also viewed the MRI and said it was apparently very similar to September's scan (I ran a visual comparison of the Jun, Sep, and Dec scans side-by-side with a similar understanding from a layperson's view). From both of the professional accounts (i.e. ignore mine), that's one piece of good news.
I headed home to pack a suitcase (unfortunately I have this down to a fine art) and collected the kids (thanks Viv) on the way back to the hospital. Maria was highly agitated by the time we left. We all put it down to her not having slept since waking at 5:20am. Usually, she would have slept an extra few hours between then and now. The kids were exhausted by the time we got home. We all miss Maria already and can never get used to her absences.
As I had promised to make the family pancakes for breakfast tomorrow (as it is the kids' last school day for the year), we are going to take some to the hospital to enjoy together before heading off to school.
