I have long been a fan of the Original Carter Family. When my sister died in January 2008, I tried to console my grief by listening to music, and the Carter Family seemed to be the best consolation. One song stays with me: The Little Black Train. "There's a little black train a comin', set your business right, There's a little black train a comin', and it may be here tonight". Well, in my sister's case it WAS "here tonight". She lived in Calgary and we live in BC, and until her husband called us to tell us she was gravely ill, we had no idea that anything was wrong. She must have known she was very sick, but death still caught her by surprise - we have never really known why she died. It wasn't cancer, most likely. But that's another story.
On Boxing Day of 2008, my brother John called me to say he was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer. He and his family had spent Christmas day with us, but he waited until the day after to tell us. He died on May 27, 2009, 13 years to the day after my Dad died of leukemia.
I had my own tussle with cancer in 2005, treated successfully for breast cancer. While it wasn't a walk in the park, it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened. I am fine, my followup mammograms are all clear and the only lasting damage is a scar on my left breast where they removed the lump, and some edema in my left arm.
But before that, my husband was treated for prostate cancer in 2003, in the midst of a terrible family crisis. He had brachytherapy and all went well until the winter of 2008, when his PSA number began to climb and was up to 25 in May 2009. So, in June of 2009, he had his first injection of Lupron. In September his PSA had dropped to 6 and we were thrilled. In October he had his second injection of Lupron. (It's an estrogen hormone treatment.)
However, over the winter he began to tire easily and experienced an increase in pain in his lower back. We had been in a car accident in November of 2008 and he had been having a lingering backache from that, but I knew in my heart that this pain over the last few months was not still from that car accident.
We are farmers and he is still going out to the farm every day - and that walk from the house to the shop is about as far as he cares to walk at once. About 100 metres. Then he sits and rests. So when his latest PSA came back at 120, it was horrible news but not really a shock, if you follow me. The cancer is "ignoring" the Lupron and has spread to his bones almost certainly.
Something else that I have not mentioned to him, and am almost unsure of mentioning here, is that he smells like cancer. My brother's wife is a nurse, and when we visited there in the weeks before my brother died, she whispered it to me that she could scarcely bear the smell but that it was part of the disease. I have read about this, it was one of the reasons long ago why doctors were advised not to smoke - smoking reduces the acuity of our sense of smell and in those old days of no lab tests, the doctor needed all his senses to diagnose patients. They still do, but that's also another story.
He hates the effects of Lupron, the hot flashes disturb his rest. He is going to have chemo and from what I have read, it will almost certainly alleviate his pain. We don't know yet what chemo regime he will have, and there is also the possibility of radiation. We understand that this won't "cure" the cancer, but we won't get hung up on that just yet. He had X-rays on Friday January 29 and we will know more when we see the results of those.
He's out at the farm right now, and I'm sitting here doing payroll. I said above that the Little Black Train sometimes takes us by surprise, but in this case, we're not letting it stop at our station. Not yet, anyway.
