The Beginning - A Very Good Place To Start

Tuesday has never been my favorite day of the week.  Monday is the clean slate day, you are fresh off a couple days of rest and relaxation and ready for what may come.  Wednesday, everyone knows, is "hump day"; once you are over that hump it's basically the end of the week.  Thursday means it's almost Friday and Friday is casual day so it's basically a start to the weekend.

Tuesday is just a day thrown in there to cause trouble and Tuesday, March 19, 2013 proved my theory.

Mom (aka: Nan, Jo'nan', Joann) had been itchy since early March.  Nothing too bad at first, a reaction to the chlorine at the gym pool she thought.  Thank goodness for Methotrexate.  Methotrexate is the drug my mom has been on for over 20 years to help with her psoriatic arthritis.  This drug doesn't always play nice with the liver, so mom was used to the routine blood work to check her liver function.  What she wasn't used to was getting a call from her rheumatologist expressing concern about how abnormally high her liver test values were.

Next on the docket was a trip to see a gastroenterologist, gallstones seemed to be the thought.  An ultrasound and CT scan showed nothing except maybe a slight abnormality with the bile duct.  The itching, high liver values and now "iced-tea brown" urine all seemed to fit; something was blocking the bile duct and mom's liver wasn't happy.  So, we capped off the week with a trip to a specialist for an endoscopic ultrasound.

We were told the procedure went well.  Something about a suspicious mass, concern that it was a tumor, but appeared surgically removable.  Biopsies were taken and results would come Monday or Tuesday.  Another procedure would be needed to place a stent in the bile duct to prop it open and ensure the bile could drain.  We left the hospital in a bit of a daze.

It was Great Wolf Lodge Weekend; the kids had been waiting forever.  Everyone hated to cancel, even mom.  So, we packed up the cars and headed to Wisconsin Dells.  The kids had a blast.  The adults were exhausted.  Mom was itchy.  The humidity by the pool didn't help matters and she was miserable.  We drove home looking forward to Tuesday when Mom would have the procedure to place the stent and the itching would start to subside.  We also hoped to have more answers about the cause of mom's symptoms.

So, there I found myself on my least favorite day of the week, pulled over on the side of the road, reading and re-reading a text from Kim, my sister.  Pancreatic Cancer.