A non-infertility post for a change

Oh my, where to start.

Things in my family are very...complicated right now. There is just too much going on. Because lists are the easiest way for me to organize my thoughts, I'll start there:

1) My mom's boyfriend is potentially very ill. The word choice of "potentially" may seem odd, but let me explain. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in July. That in and of itself is bad enough, but then yesterday, during an appointment to follow-up a CT scan he had last week, he was told that they found a small tumor on his pancreas. From the scan, they can't tell if it's cancerous or not, so he will need to have a transesophageal ultrasound done in a few weeks, as well as a biopsy, to determine if it's cancer or a benign tumor. The golden ray of light in this scenario is that the tumor is very small, we're talking millimeters, and if it is cancerous, the doctor said it's almost never found this early so that is on his side. But, if it is cancer, the surgery will be quite invasive and serious {total re-plumbing of his system...whatever that means} and the recovery will be long and hard. Obviously, my mom is gravely concerned and her boyfriend is quite frightened by all of this news. One day you're healthy, and the next...maybe not.

2) My grandma {mom's mom} isn't doing so well. Following my grandfather's death, she has really become quite obsessive, paranoid and selfish. The doctor put her on an anti-depressant and anti-anxiety med regime, which seemed to work at first, and now it's not. She started taking Abilify today to help the other medications work more effectively, so hopefully she will respond positively to the medication addition. My grandma lives an hour away from my mom so it's quite a stressor. My mom is looking in to retirement communities in the area, and the whole situation has really been challenging, especially because she is an only child {brother died when she was 18} and made even more difficult due to all of the other things going on in her life, ie working full time, coming to terms with her father's death, the downward health spiral of her boyfriend of over 6 years, and...

3) My mom's dog almost died over the weekend. My husband and I were in town visiting, so we all went up to see my grandma. Normally, my mom would leave the dog at home, but she thought Nikki would add some cheer to the visit and decided to bring her along. Good thing, because while we were at my grandma's, Nikki collapsed, and we noticed that her gums were nearly white. My mom and husband rushed her to the nearest emergency vet {which was 20 min away} while I held down the fort at grandma's, and spent the day there as Nikki underwent emergency surgery to remove her ruptured spleen, which was bleeding in to her abdomen. They found a baseball-sized tumor on her spleen that we didn't know was there, which had caused the rupture. If the dog had been at home alone, she would have died. Needless to say, it was a traumatic day and to add to the fun, my grandma was more concerned about the fact that my mom was spending the day at the vet with the dog instead of with her...bills to pay, pills to sort, food she had made that wasn't going to get eaten, etc. It's really very sad - my grandma has disappeared and this other woman has arrived in her place. Hopefully, with time and the right treatment, she will return to us. I worked at a retirement community for 4 years so I know this is very common in older adults, especially those who have lost their spouses of nearly 60 years, but it still hurts.

So that's what's going on with us right now. I am back at my mom's trying to help out where I can for the next few days. My IUI will be sometime next week, so I am taking my Femara and dealing with the headaches, although the stress in our family right now is probably more the cause of the headaches than the meds at this point, seeing that I've had a whopper of a headache for the last 3 days. Trying staying calm in this environment - every day it's something new. All of this drama has unfolded in the last 4 months. It's ridiculous - we feel like we're in the twilight zone. Add in my heart surgeries and our infertility and you've got yourself quite a fun few years. Yeesh.

If you're the praying type, please add my mom's boyfriend to your list, as well as my mom. I don't know how much more she can take. I worry endlessly about her and wish I didn't live 3 hours away, so I could do more to help. She is such a wonderful person - why do bad things happen to good people? I mull over this question quite often. Hopefully, this unfortunate series of events has had it's fun, and will leave us alone; I'd like to see it slink away, tail between it's legs, heading back from whence it came.

We can only hope.