Today was the day my sister and I went to the neurosurgeon’s office with my mom to get the results of the biopsy done on her brain tumor over a week ago. I know, right??!! OVER A WEEK AGO!!! In dog time, or in child-with-parent-with-brain-tumor-time, that’s about 743 years. That’s what it feels like.

Anyway, my sister and went for that appointment at 3pm and were disappointed to hear that the news is not as good as we’d hoped. It’s an astrocytoma, grade 4 glioblastoma. There are not great things to report about these tumors, although mom’s doctor was insistent that every tumor and every patient acts and responds differently. Understandably, he wants to focus on how HER treatment will help HER and not worry about the other statistics.

On the whole I’m okay with the way things went today. Whether it’s a “good” tumor or a “bad” tumor doesn’t matter, really. It’s something growing in her brain that shouldn’t be there.

I was annoyed with the fact that she has yet to get any actual information about what is going on except what the doctor will tell her face-to-face. I know where he’s coming from when he says he will happily answer any questions she has, but I don’t think I’m unique in that I don’t know what to ask until I have something to read or some information first. Why they won’t provide her with basic “What is a brain tumor?” kind of info is beyond me. How can a patient make decisions just based on what one guy says? Seems a bit archaic.

But moving on… the day wasn’t over. I left my mom and sister to go take care of some of her paperwork at her HR office, and felt bad because if I was crying before I left the parking lot I knew my sister wanted to – but she wouldn’t when she was with mom.

So I picked up my son in between phone calls to my brothers to let them know what we found out, got home, and before I got out of the van I got a call from our family doctor. My son had been having some back pain and we had a urinalysis done last Friday which showed ketones, or protein, in his urine. When he saw that, the doctor asked that we get some blood work done to see if there was something going on with his kidneys. The nurse who called said they had found elevated sugar levels in his blood. She said our doctor would call me later, but that elevated blood sugar is a sign of diabetes. That’s kind of where the F words came in.

The good news, if there is any, is that his blood sugar was 169mg/dl, only a little elevated. And he also doesn’t have any of the classic symptoms of diabetes – frequent urination, weight loss, lethargy, intense thirst, etc… and the day he was tested he had a slight fever that had gone on for 12 hours, which can also cause elevated blood sugar. I’m hopeful that the meeting we’re going to have with the endocrinologist will show something other than diabetes, but it could be that we just caught it very early and his pancreas just hasn’t completely shut down yet.

After breaking all the shitty news to my hubby when he got home and having a cry with him, my mom came over – alerted by my big-mouth brother about my son’s report. (thanks Brian!) We all sat in the living room and laughed – believe it or not – about things and talked about stuff and generally agreed that today was quite a day.

Hubby and I then took the kids to Chuck E Cheese for some tolerable pizza and expensive penny arcade toys, and are ready for a good night’s sleep. Or some alcohol.