A tough situation gets tougher...

You will see that as I post these historical email updates that the situation changes slightly, and I get a much better feel for what is actually being said and alluded to in some of these doctor visits. The amount of information is tough to deal with because they still speak in medical field vocabulary, so you find yourself trying to re-explain things in ways that help you understand better...

Ed died on Sunday night (09NOV14) very unexpectedly. We were really hoping he could hang on until Allyson got through the appointments she needed to later that week. It just wasn't meant to be...so Allyson flew up to Michigan Monday morning and we put off all followup appointments until Friday of that week. This is what I sent my family that week:

I really appreciate all of the emails and texts that you guys have been sending to Allyson and I over the last week…you would be surprised how good it makes us feel to know you are all thinking about us…

Ed Funeral: There will be no traditional funeral so don't worry about keeping space in your schedules for later this week. They are going to do something small at the house on Friday, and then do a “Celebration of Life” later this year. This will be something very similar to what they did for Pat Gahan since she died before the holidays and didn’t want a huge number of family/friends to travel across the country with so much other stuff going on. They will likely wait until this summer and do something at the beach (which is where most of the Kearney family descends on together anyway). I know some of you have asked for where to send flowers, but Linda prefers to receive no flowers. Instead, she wants people to make donations on behalf of Ed to your favorite charities.  Ed was cremated on Monday morning, so Ally did not get to see him in the end, but she wanted to remember what he looked like before anyway…not the shell of the man that he had become over the last year.

Allyson update: She put off her consultations with the geneticist and medical oncologists until Friday of this week. She will fly back to Charlotte tomorrow (Thursday), and then sees both doctors on Friday. We’ve had travel plans to head to Charleston for the weekend for a long time, and I think we are going to follow through with those to get away and be somewhere else for a little while. It will give the kids a chance to swim in the hotel pool and we’ll have fun with them through the weekend. They may even start the chemo on Friday, but she’ll need to have a port put in so she can receive treatments chemo via a port under her collar bone over the long haul. She doesn’t have good veins for any long term needle use into her arms. That procedure will likely happen early next week or shortly thereafter.

I guess that is it in a nutshell! I’m flying solo with the kids while she is up in Michigan and that is going fine. Our network of friends and family is checking in on us and making us dinners here and there, so I just need to focus on homework for Grayson and nebulizer treatments as both kids have respiratory illnesses going on . Thank God I’m not dealing with fevers on top of that!