Kim Linton Kim Linton's Journey

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting. Kim has been battling Advanced Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer for over a year and a half.  She was very ill when finally diagnosed; however, thanks to her wonderful oncology team at IU West Hospital and the treatment they prescribed, she began to recover from the ravages of it having spread to her left lung, spine, and brain.  She had radiation on her spine and brain and was released to stay with a dear friend while I, her sister, Barb, could get our Mom into Assisted Living near me so I could then concentrate on Kim.  The very day that Mom was settled into her new home, Kim came to stay with us. She remained with us for almost six months as the treatment began its work. Finally,  the treatment, which was doing wonders, allowed her to return to her second story apartment for a short time. She was thrilled to be back among all her antiques at the place she'd called home for 23 years! She was doing relatively well until noticing some difficulties with her balance and speech. Subsequent tests revealed that the radiation she'd had on her brain had caused necrosis in the balance and speech areas. Kim was put on steroids to reduce swelling at the base of her brain and they seemed to help with the balance and to a lesser degree, her speech. That was the good news; the bad news was that at that point, she was probably as good as she was going to get. Determined to carry on, Kim insisted on staying at her apartment, much to the family's dismay. That stay was short-lived as she became more weak and had difficulty walking. One day in early August, she lost muscle tone and slid off a chair in her living room and remained on the floor for what she felt was probably seven or eight hours! Somehow finding the strength to bang on the floor, she awoke her downstairs neighbor, who called an ambulance and she was whisked off to IU West again. She spent four days in the hospital being evaluated and undergoing tests, until she was released to a facility for rehab.  As of this writing, she is still there.