Black Monday

In mid September Elaine started to experience pain when swallowing food. Elaine put it down to rushing her food and eating on the move. She only experienced it 2 times in the month of September. We put it down to a scratch in the esophagus.
She continued on with her normal routine and training for her half marathon in San Francisco.

In October the sensation came back while eating a slice of bread,  so Elaine went to her GP and was referred for a Gastroscopy.

During this time Elaine ran her San Francisco half marathon,with a group of friends,  in which she did remarkably well. She came 22th in her age group of 2,989  and 288 out of 26,460 runners.With a time of 1hr 45mins Elaine is very reserved and did not tell many people of her achievement, she has always kept her achievements very quiet, not sure why.

Elaine was scheduled for the Gastroscopy in late November.  On meeting with the specialist ,it was decided that it may be the result of reflux and a 2 week trial with antacids should be conducted first. This trial bridged the trip to the Uk for Elaine's mum's 70th. All was well for a short time then low and behold the pain came back.  On returning back from the Uk Elaine contacted the specialist and arranged the Gastroscopy for the earliest date available which was January the 13th.

The day of the scope, 13 January.

We did the normal routine of taking the kids to school and then I took Elaine down to the hospital and disappeared to complete my own tasks. Around 11 am Elaine called and said that she had a tumor growing, can I make my way to the hospital as the surgeon would like to talk to us both. My life stopped but my mind continued to work overtime. What if, how, whats the next step, how big is it? Can they do anything? All questions that need to be answered.  I raced to the hospital to find Elaine in tears in her bed. This was the start of many tears from the both of us.
We were sent to the family room to a wait the surgeon.  A small room with no windows, nicely decorated with one couch. Elaine said this is the room where they give bad news, I guess when you work their,  there are no secrets.  We waited for what seemed a lifetime. All the time I spent starring into space wondering why.
The surgeon came in and told us the bad news, a smooth mass located 10 cm up from the stomach in the squamous cells. The size was 5.6cm x 3.2cm x 2.8, a moderate size.  This means that it is located in the upper portion of the breast bone and that he would need to arrange a CT scan and would refer Elaine to a friend who specializes in osophageal cancer.

Oh my, the world had just stopped spinning. Poor Elaine, she used to work on a ward in Nottingham that looked after patients that had received osophagectomies. She knew what was about to come and all she could say was, this is bad.
I remembered a conversation we once had about her ward when we first moved in together. She said "I never want to go through that operation,  its the worst ever".

How do you deal with bad news, especially when you know that it is someones worst nightmare.

Elaine was sent for blood work immediately afterwards and returned the next day for the CT scan.

Where ever she went in the hospital she new the staff. This was hard for Elaine and the staff.



The waiting game.

Elaine and I knew that she had a horrific form of cancer but to what extent, we were unsure. Monday night we had little sleep.  Tuesday  morning we dropped  the kids of at school. I met a good friend in the hallway and he made a comment "wow what are you free birds going to do today, skiing,skating, or just enjoying the warm blue skies". A very innocent comment. It was true it was a very clear day with warm temperatures,  yet responding to it was impossible. I started to well up and had to walk away. Sandy said Ill find you after the drop off. He found Elaine first and Elaine told him of our troubles. He offered any help he could and the fact that someone else knew, helped a lot.
Later we traveled to the hospital for Elaine's CT scan. As I sat outside the CT room I just bowed my head and prayed the whole time. We did not receive any feed back from the tech that day and had to wait for the results.
We were in a horrible place with no way of getting out or fixing it. That night I woke up convinced that we needed to sell everything but were do we start, I felt over whelmed.  god only knows how Elaine was feeling.