Uncle Ben Update 7/20

......cancer sucks

I had a great long weekend with Uncle Ben. He is doing better than I had anticipated and though he has lost a great deal of weight his mobility is good. My Brother flew in from Phoenix. The good news is that he and Uncle Ben had some time together. And then Bro went back to Phoenix.....

Still, for all of the positives I can illustrate, Ben is very sick. He is having a hard time being alone and the weight loss is worrisome. He has asked me to return and stay with/care for him sooner than later. This is one of the times that I wish my girls were 5 years older. It would make it easier to just *go* and not worry. At 7 and almost 9 they are simply too young to be latch-key kids. At any rate, I will have to figure something out.

We met with the oncologist on Monday. He seems to be a very capable doctor and is heartened but the reduction in Ben's pain. We will know more by the end of August when they do the next round of testing. My father couldn't resist telling the doc that I too was a cancer survivor (attempting to explain my raspy voice) so I had to roll out snarky remarks #238 - 242 (i.e. "Yeah, but my husband responds well to whistle commands...") just to get the focus off and make everybody laugh a little. I don't know what he wanted to accomplish by bringing it up -- maybe to illustrate that people in our family have survived the disease before so surely Ben can? Or maybe he wanted to prompt me into making a joke. Either way, it felt a little weird. Ben has been asking me a lot about my feelings/attitude about cancer trying to get a handle on his own, I think. For all of the positive things that *can* come out of fighting a battle such as this, I think I have made my position clear. Cancer sucks.