Our Last Two Weeks

Author’s Note: I began writing some of this in the midst of the experience I’m describing. On Friday, my wife Sami asked if I would write a blog post about what our family is going through. For me, writing is part of how I process difficult questions. For Sami, I think, this post is a way to let our friends and larger community know what is going on. In my sheep-related blogs, I’ve tried to be honest and transparent – sharing the joys of raising sheep, as well as the challenges we’ve faced and mistakes I’ve made. This feels different. Other than sharing about my sheep experiences, we’re a typically private and self-sufficient family. And so I want to stress that I’m sharing this because Sami wants our friends to know – that’s all. Thank you to all who have offered positive thoughts and prayers. Keep them coming!

There are no manuals for this kind of shit – we only learn to navigate these kinds of things by living through them. I usually find that writing about difficult experiences helps me process them; I’m not sure that writing about this will provide me with any insights, but Sami and I feel like we should share this.

During the third week of January, Sami and I were in New Mexico visiting our daughter Lara and her boyfriend, Micah. On Saturday, January 21, we enjoyed a great hike up an arroyo north of Las Cruces that was filled with 1000-year-old petroglyphs. That Sunday, we helped them harvest pecans in their yard and lunched on barbecued steak, lamb chops, and chilies outside on a beautiful southern New Mexico winter’s day. On Monday, we left them with one of our young border collies, Gillie, and started our two-day, 20+ hour drive home through western New Mexico and northern Arizona.

Several days before we left for New Mexico, Sami went for a run here in Auburn (she’s been training for a half marathon in March). During dinner on the first night in Las Cruces, Sami told us that she’d fallen – Lara later said Sami had further explained that she didn’t remember how or why she fell, but that she suddenly realized she was on the ground. Off and on during our visit, Lara said Sami seemed quiet – so quiet, in fact, that Lara was worried that she was uncomfortable being in their home.

As usual, Lara was more observant than me. My first inkling that something was wrong came Monday afternoon, after stopping for lunch near Reserve, NM. Driving from Reserve towards Flagstaff, we encountered very snowy roads and near whiteout conditions, so I was pretty focused and tense. But as we drove on, Sami began to have difficulty finishing her sentences – she would break off mid-sentence, and I’d have to prompt her to finish. This pattern continued, until after dinner in Flagstaff, I grew upset and asked her to tell me what was going on. Nothing, she insisted.

She seemed a little more focused Tuesday morning as we started for California, but as the day went on, the disorientation returned. She drove from Kingman, AZ to somewhere east of Barstow, and seemed to have some difficulty staying in her lane of traffic. We both laughed about it and blamed the high winds. She drove again on CA-99, from Tulare to Merced – and again seemed to have trouble staying in her lane. She got off the freeway in a confusing construction zone in Merced, and I drove the rest of the way home. I also began to notice that she was dribbling water down her chin when she sipped from her water bottle, which I attributed to the bumps on CA-99.

When we got home, she said she’d unload the truck if I worked on getting a fire going in the house (it was 47F inside when we got home!). After the fire was started, I became annoyed when she just stopped unpacking about halfway through – I thought she was being selfishly tired. I grumbled my way through the rest of our unpacking.

On Wednesday, I went to work and Sami stayed home to meet the farrier. She still seemed distracted when I got home that evening, and I asked her again what was going on – was she worried about something, or (even more insensitively) was she mad at me?! She said no, she was just tired.

Thursday morning, Sami woke up feeling sick to her stomach. I left the house early to move sheep, and when I returned to drop off a dog at around 8:15, Sami was sitting in front of the woodstove. She told me she’d earlier run to the bathroom thinking she was going to sick and had passed out – “I woke up on the floor,” she said. I insisted that we try calling her doctor, and when we couldn’t get through, I took her to the ER in Auburn.

At this point, I’d forgotten about the fall before our trip. The ER doctor seemed most concerned about a potential blood clot (based on the symptoms we’d described and on something they found in Sami’s blood work). A CT scan of her chest revealed some sort of anomaly in Sami’s aorta (the paperwork said “aortic aneurysm” but a subsequent doctor said it wasn’t that serious). We went home and I let the girls know what was going on. We were all very worried.

That evening, I drove Sami to her fair board meeting (because she’d fainted, Sami was restricted from driving). Being Sami, she wasn’t going to let a little fainting episode keep her from her civic responsibilities! When I picked her up after the meeting, though, she said she still felt kind of out of it and that her handwriting was unusually sloppy.

The next morning, I had to leave for the UC Sierra Foothill Field Station at 6:30 a.m. to help weigh steers for a research project. I talked to Lara on the drive there, and she reminded me about the earlier fall, and told me about her observations. We both agreed that we’d check in with Sami every half hour or so and insist on a response until I got home. Sami agreed – I think by this time, she knew something was really wrong. We were all worried about a possible concussion or some kind of a stroke, based on the symptoms we’d observed. I got back to Auburn in the early afternoon.

At about 4:30 that afternoon (January 27), Sami’s doctor called. I asked Sami to put her on speaker phone and listened as Sami described her symptoms and what the ER doctor had told us the day before. As we were wrapping up, I made sure to bring up the earlier fall, and the apparent cognition and motor skills (writing) issues we’d observed. The doctor recommended we go back the ER as soon as we could and ask for a CT scan of Sami’s head.

This time the ER doctor was a little aggressive – almost disbelieving of what we were describing and a bit dubious that we were back at the hospital – until he got a call from Sami’s doctor. He immediately ordered the CT scan of Sami’s head, and before he came back with the results, two of the nurses seemed to try to prepare us for some bad news. The doctor came in and said that the CT showed some swelling and some kind of mass on Sami’s brain. He indicated that he couldn’t tell exactly what was going on from the scan, but that it was serious – serious enough that he’d ordered an MRI as soon as he could get one, and that he would be admitting Sami to the hospital overnight. Later in the evening, they decided to transfer her to a larger hospital that could both do the MRI and any additional follow-up necessary. Sami was transported to Sutter Roseville – the hospital where Lara had been born more than 25 years earlier – at about 1am.

I got to Sutter Roseville on Saturday morning at around 7am. Sami was bright and alert – and still a little off mentally. The neurosurgeon came in around 10 a.m. and asked both of us about Sami’s symptoms. He seemed annoyed that the MRI hadn’t happened yet. He gave her a brief exam, and noted that the right side of her face was drooping a bit. With his pushing, the MRI was scheduled for 20 minutes later.

After the MRI, the anesthesiologist came in to prepare her for surgery – which was the first we learned that they wanted to do surgery immediately. Then several nurses came in to start getting Sami prepared. Finally, the surgeon came in and showed us the results of the MRI.

Sami had a 3cm tumor on her left frontal lobe, which he said explained the droopiness on her right side. He said it should come out immediately, and told us what the surgery would involve. Sami, in her clinical way, asked about procedures and techniques of surgery that were well beyond my comprehension. I asked her if she was scared – not surprisingly, she wasn’t. She was glad to know what was happening to her, and was curious as to how long it had been going on (as was I).

That evening, as Sami was coming out of an anesthetic fog, she asked when our daughters were coming. At some point, the hospital hooked her up to a device to monitor whether she was having seizures. The surgeon came by her room in the Neuro ICU and told us he thought he’d been able to remove most if not all of the tumor, but that we’d need to wait for the pathology report to know exactly what was going on.

On Sunday evening, both of our daughters arrived back in California (Lara from New Mexico, Emma from college in Idaho). They provided both of us with emotional support, and later in the week, they helped get the house prepared for Sami’s return (and my less-than-stellar housekeeping skills). I don’t know that I’ve ever hugged either of them as hard as I did that night.

In the meantime, we still didn’t know exactly what Sami was facing. The pathology report was slow in coming (and as of this writing, we still haven’t seen a final pathology report). We both found the uncertainty unsettling and stressful.  At one point, she said, “I just want to know what’s wrong with me. Am I dying?” Later, she texted, “I just want to be normal.” Through her stay at the hospital, she articulated the things that all of us were thinking and feeling, things that needed to be said, but which were a gut-punch, nonetheless.

Finally, on Thursday, February 2, the surgeon and the hospital doctor both came to Sami’s room to report a preliminary diagnosis – the pathology suggested that Sami had a Grade III Anaplastic Astrocytoma, an aggressive malignant primary brain tumor. And then they let us take her home.

We’re all still processing what this means, especially Sami. We’re learning more about what treatment will look like – both chemo and radiation therapy, probably starting later this month. We’re hoping to consult with specialists at UC San Francisco, one of the top neurology hospitals in the U.S. And we’re trying to remind ourselves to take things one day at a time. I’m not sure whether our access to Google has been helpful, but we’ve all been doing internet research. I won’t lie, the term “Fuck Cancer” is used with some frequency in our daily conversation at the moment. I seem to alternate between sadness, anger, and anxiety.

Part of our processing has to do with our business, work, and community obligations. I’m very fortunate to have a job that allows me some flexibility to work from home and take time off to help Sami, at least for the next several weeks. Sami has decided to close down her large animal veterinary business. And I’ve decided to step away from my part-time sheep enterprise, at least temporarily. I’m going to keep some sheep here at the house, but I won’t lease any grazing land this year. Of course, the fact that we start lambing in about 10 days makes selling sheep complicated, but I’ve had incredibly generous offers from many ranching friends to help out. We’ll see what the next 4-5 weeks bring.

During all of this, time has been oddly compressed and extended at the same time. I feel like we’ve been home from our trip for months, and yet it was barely two weeks ago that we went to the emergency room for the first time. I’ve always been the kind of dad/spouse who would “rally the troops” – tell a joke, suggest a fun activity, etc. whenever everyone else was feeling down. I have nothing left in that tank at the moment. I’m exhausted mentally and physically. I’m anxious and sad. I’m afraid. I know Sami is too. That our fear is natural and expected doesn’t make it any easier.

I’ve also experienced a great deal of self-doubt – did I fail to ask the right questions when surgery was suggested? What else should I have done? Should I have noticed Sami’s symptoms sooner? One of the oncologists we’ve spoken with said the tumor probably developed very rapidly (probably less than a month ago). I wonder what I missed.

As “doers,” Sami and I are also planners. We like to think ahead. And so living day-to-day is hard for us mentally – we want to know what’s over the horizon. This has reminded me that I can’t really know – ever – what tomorrow will bring.

Finally, I find that asking for (and accepting) help is difficult. Asking for help requires us to admit our vulnerability. Asking for help requires us to admit that the illusion of our self-sufficiency is just that, an illusion. We are so privileged to have the insurance and financial means (at the moment) to cope with this. That said, little things like visits from friends are hugely helpful. Many of our friends have offered to provide meals for us – and our daughters prepared a freezer-shelf full of dinners that even I can figure out how to warm up and serve! Our kitchen is full of flowers and groceries ordered by friends who are further away. Other friends are building fence for our sheep and feeding livestock guardian dogs. Still others have offered to pick up groceries or have livestock feed delivered. Friends have simply sat and cried and laughed with Sami. We’re blessed to be part of such an amazing and extended community.

I usually try to end a blog post with some lesson I’ve learned, or with something I’ll do differently next time a situation arises. Or perhaps with some observation that I hope is relevant for others. I don’t have any of that this time. For me, the experience still to raw and recent. Understanding, I hope, will come with time. For now, we’re all just trying to get through from one day to the next.