Life and death...

The past 2 weeks have been kind of crazy and stressful.

I didn't mention on here that my dad had to have surgery to remove his gallbladder on November 29th. My dad actually has a lot of medical issues one of which is liver cirrhosis. He needs a liver transplant and we've been dealing with that for about 5 years now. Most recently, he was found to be having gallbladder failure and they found that it was adhering to his liver and needed to be removed. I'm happy to say that the surgery went better than the doctors expected and my father is making a wonderful recovery.

Right around the time of my father's surgery, my husband's grandfather was in the hospital with lots of complications too. He'd been in and out of the hospital and nursing homes for months at that point but he had hit a low and had to be intubated since he could no longer breathe and swallow on his own. He had end-stage leukemia, some organ failure, dementia. He was in his last days. The family was faced with a decision and decided to remove the tubing and allow him to pass in peace. He passed away on Sunday December 4th. We went to his wake on Tuesday where he heard more bad news.

My husband's cousin's daughter Bianca has been battling lymphoma and leukemia for about 2 years now. She got sick right after Dh and I got married (she was our flower girl). The Make a Wish Foundation sent her and her family to Hawaii on a beautiful vacation and the doctors said she was in remission after that trip. A little while later she got sick again and has been in the hospital ever since (she's been in the hospital at least 80% of the last 2 years). They found a bone marrow donor but then that person got sick and they couldn't do the transplant. They ended up doing a cord blood transplant a couple months ago and thought that would work. On the night of DH's grandfather's wake (Tuesday night) we got a call that the doctors found something on one of Bianca's lungs. They would do a biopsy to see if it was more cancer. If it's cancer, they say there's nothing else they can do. If it isn't cancer, they will do surgery to remove the portion of her lung with the mass but she is in such bad condition that they believe she has a 10% chance of surviving the surgery. Her parents are now discussing having her be discharged to live out her last days as comfortably as possible at home. The results came back inconclusive so they are now waiting for answers to make their next moves.

So what else can happen?? DH is stressed and miserable, understandably so. I feel stressed and helpless. I hate seeing DH so drained of life. He is typically such an upbeat, funny person. It's kind of overwhelming during this point in my pregnancy too. In a short time, our lives will change forever when I give birth to our son. I hope things get better soon.