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Janiece’s Story

Site created on February 3, 2021

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Lisa and I haven't shared this publicly until today. Some of you know that Mom had lung cancer diagnosed about 2 years ago. She had 5 rounds of radiation and was pronounced "cancer free". Over the past few months, Mom has had more and more incidents when she couldn't recall certain items or memories, and her physical shape has gotten less and less steady and more frail. She frequently had periods of nausea and other GI distress varying from one end of the spectrum to the other. Mid-November, Mom was taken ill and diagnosed with Covid-19. She spent a couple of weeks at home, very sick and not eating or drinking really anything but refusing treatment of any kind; she finally woke up from a nap one afternoon and asked Lisa to call EMS to take her to the hospital. Luckily, she was able to come home after only a couple of days there, but she had lost a great deal of weight (Covid affected her GI tract mainly), and needed help getting back her appetite. At the time of discharge, her doctors did note that they saw some spots on her lungs in her chest x-ray, so Lisa and I immediately made an appointment to follow up with her oncologist. She was scheduled for a PET scan for December 29th, but took a fall the night before and wasn't up to making the trip to Amarillo the next day, so we re-scheduled and she finally got her scan the week after New Year's 2021. The results from the scan weren't remarkable for her lungs -- Dr Ravipati said the spots seen on the x-ray were likely shadows caused by the radiation -- but she did note that there was some "activity" in Mom's brain that they wanted to investigate further and so she was scheduled to have an MRI the following week. We got the results of her MRI on January 21st. Mom has 2 tumors (cysts) on her brain that are both quite large. It is not certain whether the cancer is a result of her lung cancer that may have metastasized, or whether this is a completely new, and very aggressive, form of brain cancer. Due to mom's age, she is not a candidate for surgery, and radiation treatments would only be palliative and would make her very weak and tired; the radiology oncologist also said that the treatment would only perhaps give her another couple of weeks to maybe a month before the cancer would overtake any shrinkage the radiation would give. Given the size of her tumors and the rapid decline in her health between when she contracted Covid before Thanksgiving and the time of the PET Scan/MRI, we were told we might have anywhere from 2 weeks to maybe a month or two with her if we did nothing at all.

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Newest Update

Journal entry by Lynn Garrett — Jul 6, 2021

First of all, I apologize for not getting this post on this website two weeks ago when I put it on my Facebook profile. You all have no idea how often we think of each one of you and the kind words and deeds your shared with us during Jan's illness and passing. We have not forgotten.

We are planning to have a Celebration of Life service for Mom in Hereford at the Presbyterian church on July 10th at 1pm. That is a Saturday.

Lisa and I both realize that it has been nearly 5 months since Mom passed, but we needed some time to be sure we could get all her grandkids here at the same time and Covid slowed that down a bit.

There are so many good friends who we know Mom (and Daddy) loved and who loved them and would want to know. Two of the most precious of them have already gone on to be in Heaven since she did, and it makes us sad that we won't get to hug their necks again while we remember our mom. If you have any special memories you would like to share with us, we would love to have those!

There will be a family meal at the church at 11:00 before the service. If you plan on being with us, please contact either Lisa or me by Thursday, July 8th so we can give a headcount to the church. If there are enough people coming who would like a chance to visit together after the service, we will be happy to host you at the house afterwards.

Please don't feel bad if you cannot be with us, but we would love to have an idea of who can be there so we can plan our celebration accordingly.

Read More of the journal titled "July 6, 2021"

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