Treatment

Yesterday I took my grandma to her first chemo treatment. It went really well, despite it taking an eternity & them bruising the crap out of her hand trying to draw blood.

After the treatment was over I took her to my job to wait for my cousin & her daughter to pick her up & take her to our hometown so I didn't have to drive all the way back there (an hour). She told me, "Andrew, I'll always remember you were the one who was with me for my first treatment." That's right!

On Christmas, EVERYONE is supposed to be coming over. This will be the first time in years that this will happen. Even though there will be one less person (my grandpa), there will be more babies. My grandmother. All 5 of her kids (living) kids. The 3 in-laws. All 10 grandkids. 5 of their spouses. And all 10 great-grandkids. In a doublewide trailer. It's going to be a glorious trainwreck. Since everyone will be there & considering the circumstances, we're going to take some family pictures. That'll be interesting. The last family picture we had done was just the grandkids when I was the baby of the family (back in 1987).

I promise to post some different material in the next few days. I think I know what my next post is going to be, but I've been debating about whether or not I want to actually write it because of how embarrassing it is.

Long Road Ahead

As mentioned in my vlog, my grandmother has a brain tumor. Obviously, that sucks donkey dick. We got the biopsy results back yesterday & we found out that the tumor is at Stage 3 & is malignant. The prognosis is that she has a 50% chance of living a year with the chemo & radiation, & if she is in the survival part of the 50% there's a 25% chance she'll live an extra year. The medicine they're going to use for her is $10,000 per dose. Seriously. What the crap. Luckily she has insurance, but regardless of that she still has a 20% co-pay.

After losing my grandfather (her husband) back in March, this has been a very bad year for our family. We were all kind of dreading Christmas because of how...weird it would be with him gone (though he usually sat back & made smart-ass comments). So on top of that, we all have to deal with the fact that there is a very good chance this is her last Christmas, too.

She's so wobbly now that a lot of us are taking turns staying with her at night in case she falls. Sunday night is my turn, which means I may not get to watch the "Survivor" finale (go Sophie!). Then on Monday morning I'm taking her to Duke to her first chemo session. That's awesome.

Her with Baby Me. My grandfather is in the chair behind us.