We can't circle like this forever, Captain Russel; we'll run out of fuel!

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

As they say in the comic books “Aarrrggghhh!” No, she’s not getting worse, and, to quote Python, “She’s not dead yet.” But she can’t stay in her current holding pattern forever, no matter that she’s a tough old bird, 83 years old. My Mom, aka Rae Russel, is still in and out of her semi-consciousness, still struggling with a fever and congestion in her lungs. All this directs energy and healing away from her brain and this has to occur if she’s going to fully wake up and get herself headed toward home.

The longer she’s inert in bed, the greater the toll on her body and the longer her eventual physical rehab will be. So, here’s your mission gang, should you decide to accept it because it isn’t impossible: please keep sending her your psychic support.

I’ll keep posting photos of how she looked before surgery to remind and inspire you. All of us here agree, two warm-hearted doctors included, my Mom/Rae is fully capable of restoring herself if she gets out of the damned hospital that is taking its toll on her. (The same hospital helping keep her alive.)

Rae’s struggle in Kaiser Hospital Terra Linda (a small community in San Rafael, Marin county, 20 miles from my house) is both small and epic. While our massive financial institutions loudly fight to continue their high flying existence as we’ve know them, one old woman is quietly fighting for some extra time in her hometown on the ground in Petaluma with her friends and family.

I keep saying, including to my Mom in her bed: I’m ready to let her go ahead and die if that’s what’s she wants to do. Problem is (for me), the last I heard from her own mouth just two weeks ago, this wasn’t what she wanted. Before going in to have her brain tumor removed on Monday September 15 she said she wanted some more time.

So c’mon Rae, if this decision still stands, now’s the time to open your eyes, start talking more regularly above a mumble, and can get your ass outta there. Then you’ll have earned more interaction and endless yakking with your fans while rehabilitating your tired old body.

I could report more about medical details—meds, antibiotics, blood oxygen saturation levels and endlessly on—but frankly I don’t care (much) about them. The doctors reign here, the nurses dispense these goodies, and I focus on her will to live, her psychic survival and from this her physical strength to carry on. What’s hardest is the not-knowing. I can only tell myself this is one more (last?) lesson Rae is delivering, me doing all the talking at her bedside, she mostly just listening, a role reversal if ever there was one.

Please join me in pulling on her chain linking her to our realm of consciousness here on Earth, this crazy and fun existence. I know it’s ultimately her call, but if she’s going to make a grab for it, we’re here to help and cheer her on. Thanks for rooting for her, directly if you believe in such techniques as I do, or in whatever way works for you.

With love,
Jack

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Dear friends of Rae Russel (my Mom),

I was with her yesterday, Friday, 9.26, for four hours at Kaiser (hospital) Redwood City.  I made the effort to get there (30 miles south of SF) earlier, before 9am, when her energy level is much higher than in the afternoon.  When we visit in the afternoon she’s just sleeping, and it’s frustrating to hear the nurses report she opened her eyes earlier in the day before we were there.  I saw her Thursday too, but later in the day when she's much sleepier.

The Good News is she’s hanging in there, not getting worse and I say a LITTLE better in her awareness and awakeness.
The Bad News is we all agree we feel like we’re in a race against time: the longer she’s stuck in a hospital bed, the more her old body deteriorates.  Everyone knows lying inert in bed is awful on the body and means more rehab time when you finally get up.

More Good News is she was transferred yesterday, up from the farther away Redwood City hospital with its Neuro unit, back to San Rafael which is closer for most of us to visit.  Her condition is stable, she doesn't need any more neurosurgery, thank you.  Andy and Karen and I will see her around 11am today.  I'll report any big changes.

Her brain surgeries—one to remove the tumor, a second to stop the bleeding from the first—are behind her.  Her CT scans are, as they around here, "clear."  Only the unpredictable process of her brain healing and her body recuperating lay ahead.  This is certainly all still unknown and life threatening territory.  I’m able to be realistic and acknowledge a GOOD result here would be: my Mom wakes up, becomes able to converse with all her friends and family again—rather than just mumbling a few responses when we talk loudly and repeatedly to break through the fog she's in.   Then, once able to interact, having a year to live.  

We’ll take more, we’ll settle for less, but we're unanimous in not wanting her laying inert and only marginally responsive in a hospital bed.  We all know Rae wouldn’t want this either.  She rolled the dice and opted for surgery, to get more time than if the tumor were left intact in her head.

We are where we are, in some way a familiar feeling place to Andy’s coma experience a decade ago in some respects:  there is no reason she can’t recover, staring today.  And no cautious doctor, no person can predict what will happen (perhaps only Rae).  And also, one other respect: we're in consensus that your thoughts and prayers and well-wishing directed her way ABSOLUTELY HELP.

Thanks for being there and wishing her well.

With love,
Jack

Monday, September 22, 2008

Jack Gescheidt here. I’m in debt to all of you for keeping up your psychic well wishes—prayers and thoughts of healing—for my Mom, Rae Russel. Call them what you will, I believe that “thoughts are things” and these things make a difference. If you believe this too, please keep clicking your heels.

One week after a first surgery, she is stable and improving slowly. Our neurosurgeon, Dr. Clothing (Kleider), was, in my opinion, cautiously optimistic today. That’s just about jumping up and down on the table for a man well schooled in being analytical and not prone to emotional outbursts. (That’s MY job.)

He says the most recent CT scan TODAY shows the 2nd surgery last week was successful—did I tell you all she went back in this past Thursday (Sept. 18th) for a second craniotomy because of bleeding/clotting from the first?…Well for those of you who missed this snippet of news, she did.

So now the clotting that was delaying her recovery (and ability to talk and open her eyes) has been cleared. With a little bit more time she may recover to where she was (although the Dr., like me, is a little surprised she hasn’t recovered more fully already, the fourth day after her second surgery).

Despite knowing I “should be” grateful for what we have—Rae’s not only not dead, she IS improving—I’m also just impatient and tired of waiting for her to get through the discomfort of being asleep so much. And I do mean hers, not ours, because we knows she wants to be alive and kicking, not sleeping her time away in a hospital bed.

And I’d prefer to converse with her again rather than just talk at her while she mostly just lays there. For those who know Rae, don’t think I don’t appreciate this exquisite irony. My own impressive capacity for talk (and writing) can’t compete with the source, dear ol’ Mom. Our “conversations” are more often her talking non-stop, and me waiting to get a word in, or just giving up and meditating on the nature of irritation. Oh how I miss that now, want her to talk a blue streak like in the good old 7 days ago.

But she is tough and stubborn and even at 83 wants to live so I’ll be damned surprised if she quits on us now. She’s recovering from the trauma of surgery at her age, her brain healing to release her from a fog of semi-consciousness. Her eyes stay closed and she doesn’t speak unless spoken to vigorously, and then only a word or two. Those few words are evidence her mind is still functioning. Karen reminds me that Andy, at age 40, was exhausted from his trauma, and slept prodigiously for months, so why should double-brain surgery on an octogenarian be different, even without the coma?

What’s especially disheartening is my Mom is still far less conscious and sharp and communicative than when she rolled the dice last week and went ahead with surgery to remove her large terminal brain tumor. I realize I could say, “just one week,” too.

And fyi, the nature of these cancerous beasts (Google “Glioblastoma” and hold onto your hat) is that even removing one, as has been done here successfully, provides no clean bill of health nor long life. But the statistics suggest, having removed the bulk of it, she’ll get more months to live. That is, of course, if she survives the surgeries. You all know that joke: The surgery was a success but the patient died. I know there’s humor in there, I’m just trouble getting the laugh out it right now.

All this hospital effort is worthless if she’s not able to talk and connect with us the way she loves to. But indeed she can any day turn the corner, start a fast recovery from the debilitating effects of having the inside of her head examined, twice, in one week at age 83.

I simply ask for you to hope for this too. It’s powerful non-Western medicine, this “on a wing and a prayer” stuff so I write this email to ask you to envision more talk, all-talk, nonstop talk for my Mom, Rae Russel, too.

Speaking of which…unlike me—and I bet you too—my Mom loves talk radio (NPR and such) for—get this—lulling herself to sleep. She leaves it on all night, has done this for decades. It’s her way of taming her active mind. What would be torture for me, keeping me awake and irritated, is her balm to keep her sleeping soundly. Go figure. So we’ve set up her continuous National Petroleum Radio in her hospital room for mental stimulation. What would kill me in a hospital nourishes her. Oh, mysteries of life.

I was with her on Friday and Saturday in Kaiser’s Redwood City hospital (south of SF by 30 miles). Andy & Karen visited yesterday, Sunday. Of course I took photos and some video too, but plan to share these only as she recovers so we can, as with Andy’s journey a decade ago, show and enjoy the progress she’s made, rather than bemoan our current predicament. She is, after all, alive; the surgery was successful; she is receiving loving 24/7 care from nurses in her NOU unit (Neurological Observation Unit, not ICU).

Thanks for reading all this, and thank you for your thoughts of her and for her, through the ethers.

Impatiently, lovingly yours,
Jack Gescheidt

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Hello friends of Rae Russel,

Jack Gescheidt here. I’ve waited to send this update because I’ve wanted to deliver good news. My Mom has had about as successful a surgery (on Monday, 9.15) to remove her brain tumor as can be expected. Meaning what was most a golf ball sized Glioblastoma (Google or Wikipedia that if you dare) has been largely removed. She hasn’t had any excessive bleeding or other possible complications. This week a biopsy will be performed on the removed tissue, which helps determine options for future radiation and chemotherapy, if Rae opts for further treatment in the weeks and months ahead. Do know that with this type of tumor, removing much of it is NOT a clean bill of health; it’s a cancer that will kill her, we just don’t know when. But isn’t that the way life works for everyone?

The predictions of how long she has to live are low for this type of tumor, so I instead choose to focus on the fact that all numbers are predictions based on past similar conditions. They can be quite accurate, or not. I’ve also been in the ICU trenches before (and she is in post-op care at Redwood City Kaiser, not ICU), and enjoyed the unlikely experience of beating long-shot odds.

I’m also constantly aware—and so can you be—that my Mom is happy with her 83+ years, already longer than she ever imagined she’d have. And her recent years living in good health and spirits in Petaluma have been, she keeps reporting, her happiest in her life. To paraphrase one of her pre-surgery perspective remarks, “If I die on the table, it’s okay.” Typical gutsy, plain-talking Rae.

The frustrating place we’re at currently: she’s recovering from surgery, but more slowly than we’d like. She’s mostly appears to be sleeping, but then you can talk with her and she answers. We are told this is just how post-surgical recovery can be for some people, esp. now that the general anesthesia is out of her system. They keep giving her tests (CT scans and an MRI today) to check for brain bleeds and other such nasty possible stuff, and so far all’s clear.

I look forward to reporting by week’s end that she is improving more quickly: livelier and able to use her fancy pants “Jitterbug” cell phone (designed esp. for oldsters) from her bed again. (Take note she’s not a big fan of gabbing by phone, cell or otherwise before this hospital stay.)

At that happy time I’ll report on her condition in more detail, and with info about where she’ll be moved, which we hope is back to her pre-op rehab facility in Petaluma, just 2 miles from her house.

We all know how determined my Mom is. She went into surgery for her tumor saying something like, “I want some more time, not five years, but another year if I can get it.”

I believe that this strong desire is one critical determinant for her healing or not.

For now, I ask you to keep her in your thoughts, your consciousness, your prayers; to keep her connected to this Earth plane (as we call it sometimes here in Marin).

I fed her applesauce on Monday, after her surgery, in tearful wonder and appreciation for how life works, orchestrating a role reversal for two souls. She used to patiently, lovingly feed me like this over 45 years ago, now I can do it for her.

Thanks for listening in on this and sending Rae your love.

With some sadness, some impatience, and a lot of love for my Mom,

Jack

Rae Russel (my mother) diagnosed with brain tumor

Tuesday, Sept 9, 2008
 
Dear friends and family,
 
I don’t really know how to convey all this properly, so I’ll just jump in and tell the tale.
 
My Mom, our very own Rae Russel, exhibited symptoms two weeks ago we THOUGHT were the result of another stroke, or series of mini-strokes.  This included losing use of much of the left side of her body; arm, leg and (left side of) mouth.
 
She CAN still think clearly and speak, though with somewhat slurred speech.  She is not in any pain.  She’s been in and out of the hospital.  As of Thursday, Sept. 4th, she is now in a quiet, clean, well-run rehab facility in Petaluma, about 2 miles from her house.
 
Hospital tests last week (CT scans and MRI) found a brain tumor, 4x5cm, on the right side of her brain.  (A photo of the tumor is attached to this email.)  The tumor is not malignant; she does not have cancer elsewhere in her body.  But it’s big and it is terminal.  The big question is not IF, but WHEN it will kill her.  The bell curve for living with this type of tumor — known as a Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), common name Glioblastoma — is estimated at 3-6 months if left untreated.  Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glioblastoma.
 
This estimate, like most such estimates, is based on documented previous cases and can be quite accurate.  And of course it can be quite wrong.  She could die in a month or live a year, or more. 
 
The next decision she will make—with our input and that of our kind-hearted neurosurgeon we are lucky to have—is whether to proceed with a biopsy.  This is a brain surgery to extract a tissue sample to determine what types of radiation and/or chemotherapy might be effective in reducing or removing the tumor.  The tumor’s location makes it unlikely to be operable/removable, yet once “inside,” they could attempt to reduce its mass if possible.
 
The statistics on radiation/chemo treatments, if all went well, show she could extend her life an additional year. Again I add all these predictions are averages on a bell curve.  She could die from complications from biopsy/surgery or following elective chemo/radiation, or successfully recover and live 1 or 2 or more years. 
 
We learned first hand with my brother’s Andy’s accident and coma and brain surgery nine years ago (!), no one can accurately predict what will happen.  Andy made a miraculous recovery.  My Mom is 83 as of May 2008, not 40 as Andy was.  Then again, she’s tough and wants to live.  (No doubt Andy or I could pretty much guarantee extending her life a year if either of us promised her a grandchild…and this would include if the Exxon Valdez ran aground over her rehab bed.)
 
Right now she’s requesting rest and peace and quiet, so she’s not making or receiving many phone calls.  And she's in good spirits considering what she's facing.  If you feel moved to write you can email me and I can print them out to bring to Rae, although so far she’s more into chatting with her therapists, nurses and neighbors than reading anything.  Same old Mom.  You can also simply, powerfully, just keep her in your minds, your hearts, your prayers.
 
For those who’ll ask how I’m doing: after the initial shock of learning she has a brain tumor that will kill her, I’m integrating this sadness into my daily life. 
 
I have several optimistic overlays on it too, all as true for me as the sad prospect of watching my mother die sooner rather than later:
 
1.  This is not, for me, a tragedy akin to family and friends who have succumbed to cancer in the middle of their lives.  It seems more the natural order of things.  83 or 84 or 85 is a good run at life, and my mother and I agree on this.  She has repeatedly said over the last 3-4 years living in Petaluma, CA, that she is happier than she’s ever been in her life, she has long outlived her own parents, longer than she ever expected to, and is thrilled to be living near and feeling connected to her two sons.  She has in recent years become increasingly grateful for the small pleasures of life.  She seems to have found/made some degree of peace in her life.
 
2.  Knowing she will very likely not live another 5 or 10 years—and I leave room for long shots—she can live life with this knowledge many people don’t receive.
 
3.  She is not in pain.  She is conscious, lucid and can communicate as she chooses.
 
I write this group note to be efficient with my time as I continue to have my own life, which I want to include other topics OTHER than this big one.  My life includes not only being available to help my Mom and spending time with her (just 20 miles away) in the months ahead, but also: time with my loving and supportive woman, Amy: time happily making people and TreeSpirit photographs; time being and aware and grateful for the tremendous richness of my life and the number of caring people I am blessed to call friends.
 
All of this will be informed by whatever happens next, the inevitable pain and the inevitable joys, and none of us knows what this will be.  And isn’t this true for everyone?
 
With love,
Jack