Bad News Comes In Threes

Updates at bottom
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Old wives' tale. Superstition. We'll see, I guess. If the bad news keeps on coming after this one, maybe there's nothing to it after all. Personally, I'd be glad if the superstition's right, and the bad news stops at only three.

Got a call late this afternoon that Deb is in the emergency room with pain, fever, nausea. They do a cat scan and find... a growth on one ovary - the size of a deck of cards! At this point they don't know what it is - an abcess that burst or a cancerous tumor or anything in between. There's something bad in there because the white blood cell count is way too high. She's on morphine to numb the pain, and tomorrow they operate. No one knows what they'll find. And here I am stuck out East with all flights sold out due to Easter weekend. I won't get back until Sunday afternoon, after it's all over.

Fortunately there are friends around her and working girl J has the weekend off and is driving up from Chicago tonight to stay at home with the crazy dog Inferno. College boy J is on a road trip in Ohio but will come up Sunday, as will the inlaws, and - finally - me.

It's a repeat of 25 years ago when the same thing happened on her other side and family plans took a whole different direction. Scary then and scary now.

And I just feel tired, weak and useless. What I need to be is brave, strong and helpful.



Saturday night update:

Surgery postponed until temperature and white blood cell count under control. Later in the week probably. At least by then I'll be back. Temperature was 104.6 today until they used a cooling blanket to drive it down. She sounded delerious on the phone and very, very frightened. Helpless took on a new meaning for me today.