kvetching up

Pollock Over the months I have quite clearly fallen down on the job in chronicling this journey.  I am trying to do better.  For instance, since Jenny was diagnosed, we consulted both in person with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and over the phone with Memorial Sloan Kettering.  Each place told us there is nothing to be done other than the palliative care she is receiving.  We knew it was bad news at SCCA, when only a single doctor came to meet with us, where a team had been promised.  I imagine the rookie doctor gets the job of kissing off cancer patients that are determined to be well and truly fucked.  At the Sloan-Kettering phone conference, the doctor (we only expected one) was incredibly apologetic and sad for Jenny.  I found him lovely, but presume, given he was at least my age, that this work will destroy him, if it hasn't already. While irrational, I expect there may be attendant guilt with telling someone they are beyond rescue.

Jenny has cancer.  Terminal cancer.  We learned that in late July. Jenny had  dropped 25 lbs. in the spring without trying.  She had been having vague stomach complaints since October.  As a balm for her concerns, her doctor agreed to do a CT scan for her, but told her they would find nothing.  Jenny wanted to rule out pancreatic cancer, which had recently killed her dad-in the spring of 2019.  Her mother had been sick with lymphoma since February 2020.  The day of the scan, the doctor told Jenny they would get results back in a few days. When Jenny's phone rang that same afternoon, I was in the living room with Abby, where I was torturing her by playing the Rapping Duke on Youtube. Jenny shouted from the room, "Geoff, get in here, the doctor's on the phone." "You have a four cm. mass on your pancreas,"  he said. Jenny made a sound like someone had punched her in the stomach.  "There is a spot on your liver. You have a necrotic lymph nod...