The New Normal

 After you read this blog post, look back at this photo! This was from a few weeks back, when we enjoyed a family ping pong night out! 

 Life Continues! Vivi, Morty, and Butoh! 

My mother making hospital time look very glam after we decorated her IV pole with Christmas ornaments!

 Our new motto: "Fuck cancer. Praise diamonds."

 Aaron setting up our Thanksgiving meal of sushi in the lounge at the hospital.

Hi Everyone,

I apologize for our/my lack of updates over the last few months. However, my mother's situation has been changing non-stop, that it's been hard to keep up with everything ourselves, let alone making sure I am keeping all of you up to speed. However, after some major changes in the last few weeks, I felt it was time to offer an update. It's a rather long one - so pour yourself a cup of tea, and find a cozy spot to sit!

As you are all aware, my mother underwent major surgery this past fall due to a severe intestinal blockage. The surgery left Vivi with an ileostomy bag, which I will spare you the details of - if you don't know what it is - but I will say there is nothing easy about living with one (she will have it for the rest of her life), and Vivi has been an absolute trooper through this major adjustment. Additionally, the surgery led to several other complications, all of which my mother has bulled through, guns blazing and diamonds blinging!

We spent the better part of this Fall at Sloan Kettering - where we could not have asked for better care from nurses and doctors who became extended family by early Winter. It's always comforting to be on a first name basis with the entire staff of a hospital you spend a lot of time in - until you realize that you are spending so much time in said hospital that you are actually getting to know these people so well. We even spent Thanksgiving night there, fabricating our own "family dinner"out of ordered in sushi in the lounge on the 19th floor of the hospital. We were still making that lounge our second home when the holidays rolled around, and we spent one evening stealing ornaments off of the Christmas tree to decorate my mother's IV pole. Strangely, while it was a stressful time for us all, there are a thousand memories we will forever hold from those months. And, per usual, we also walked away with many classic Vivi stories. Even when she is nearly on her death bed, only my mother can provide such antics and entertainment. Just to share a few:

As most of you know through my stories by now, my mother refuses to stay in the hospital unless she has a private room. This becomes her sole mission upon entering the doors of Sloan Kettering - no matter what her condition. Well, this time, it was taken to a new extreme. After my mother's initial major surgery, which was over 4 hours, and invasive to the point where I will leave the details of the nature of the surgery out - but needless to say, she was in for a long and tough recovery. Anyway, we have been through enough of these as a family at this point, that we have the drill down pretty well. 1-3 of us can be with her up until surgery. Then they send us to the waiting room (or down to the cafeteria if it's a longer surgery as this was) and call us along the way with updates. Then when surgery is completed, we meet with the doctor to get the full report, and are eventually let into the recovery room to see my mother once she is awake. However, these post-surgery visits are only 15 minutes, and from my experience are usually not very pleasant. Not only is it just tough to see my mother in such a state, but she is generally not very lucid and can only manage to ask a few basic questions over and over again (except for the one time when the nurse informed us that she was going on about how brilliant her son - my brother Aaron - was and then turned to me and asked if I was also family).

In any case, this was by far the hardest post-recovery visit I had experienced yet. My mother was clearly in a lot of pain, and could barely open her eyes or speak. However, we still had to go through with her wishes - that Aaron and I check on her while my father arrange with the attending nurses to make sure she be moved to a private room in the ICU. So we did just that. Aaron and I went to our mother's side, doing the best we could to comfort her, make her aware of what just happened and help her understand where she was. Meanwhile, my father went to speak to the nurse who was standing about 10 feet away from the bed. As soon as the words "private room" came out of my father's mouth, my mother's eyes shot open, she lifted her head, and very clearly shouted, "Ask for Domingo!" Mind you, Domingo is the man who organizes room reservations at the hospital and would be the most likely candidate to arrange for the private room. So while my mother didn't even know where she was, she sure knew exactly who she had to speak to in order to arrange her private room - wherever it may be!

Story number two was just before my mother's second surgery where they were putting a tube into her kidney to help it function better. Again, we went through our usual drill. However, since this was set to be a rather short surgery, my father and I (who were there that day), opted to simply wait in the waiting room. We knew we would get an update after the was put under, when surgery started, when surgery finished, and when we could see her. Generally, if you are in the waiting room, someone will come out and ask for the family of the patient. So our cue would be, "Teich Family". We then raise our hands and someone comes to update us on her status. We had, unfortunately, been in this particular waiting room several times over that week, so I knew the guy who was the "informer" quite well at this point.

However, all of a sudden, I hear a female's voice, but she was not asking for our family, she is asking for ME! I hear, "Aly? Aly? Is there an Aly here?" After looking around to realize there was not another family with the last name Aly, I apprehensively raised my hand, and was then approached by the woman who was clad in scrubs, and clearly an O.R. nurse. Needless to say I was rather confused, especially when she walked up with her phone out. She then informed me why she was coming to find me.

"Honey, I need to take a picture of you."
"Um, what?" I said, looking at my father who was equally confused.
"Your mother refuses to let us put her under until I take a picture of you."
"Okay, why?"
"She thinks one of our surgical fellows is cute, and wants him to see a picture of you before they start surgery."

While this may seem completely outrageous to the common person, if you know my mother as I do, you, too, would be conditioned to such moments. So without further question or hesitation, I smiled for the camera, asked the nurse if it came out okay, and continued chatting with my father, after offering a few quiet apologies to the other families in the waiting room. Only my mother:)

As I am sure you have gathered by now, Vivi did, despite a few hairy moments, walk away from the hospital and finally headed home. Life has certainly been a bit more challenging, and we have brought on some amazing extra hands to help with Vivi's care, but my mother is still forging ahead with as much of her Vivi zest that she can muster each day. However, the most significant update is that a few weeks ago, we made the decision to walk away from Sloan Kettering all together.

My mother went back onto chemotherapy after her surgery, and was set to have a scan to check her progress about three weeks ago. Unfortunately, the scan indicated that the treatment was not, in fact, working and her cancer was continuing to spread. Furthermore, our doctors at Sloan did not feel confident that there was much else they could offer my mother at this stage.

While it didn't come as a complete surprise, this news was certainly not easy to take. However, as a family, we were not about to give up - most especially my father - who right away set an appointment with an oncologist at Mount Sinai with whom we have consulted with throughout my mother's entire process. Personally, I wasn't all too hopefully that he would have anything further to offer, as he had seemed to be on the same page as our doctors at Sloan thus far. However, it turns out he did, in fact, have something to offer us - and something that sounded too hopeful to be true!

He informed us of a center in Eastchester called The Bruckner Clinic. They have done most of their work with pancreatic patients, as I understood at that point at least, and only had a very small group of 20 women they were treating with Ovarian Cancer. However, all 20 were either in remission or on their way to it (and their pancreatic patients - who under most circumstances don't live a few months at best - were living for up to 6 years!). See, too hopefully to be true! However, too hopeful or not - it offered just that - hope - and there is nothing else we can ask for right now.

So my mother is now on her second treatment at the Bruckner Clinic! While it has been a challenging transition to the new center (which is an hour away) and the new treatment, my mother seems to be getting through it and doing really well!

I call the treatment a "chemo cocktail".  She receives several types of chemotherapy at a low dose, all given over a 24-hour period of time, in combination with two drugs whose function is to rip down the defenses of cancer cells and help the chemo get in. She gets the treatment every two weeks, and she is able to go home in between with a pack that provides the drip overnight. So we are back in full battle mode, and have full hopes that maybe we can, in fact, beat this thing in the end.

In my next post, I will tell you all about the Bruckner Clinic, as I am still in awe of this place, but I think I have given you plenty to chew on for now.

Despite my lack of updates, you have all been, per usual, amazing and we would never make it through any of this without your love and support. It truly gives my mother, and our family, the strength to continue ahead down this long and arduous road. So we offer love back and a never-enough thank you from the bottom of our hearts!