This is a post I never wanted to write, but one that I have probably taken far to long to write. My role in Dana's blog prior to this was to proof read it and take my name out of it as often as she allowed. Today is August 2nd, 16 weeks since Dana passed away. At this time her blog has been clicked on over 47 thousand times, roughly 3 thousand times since her passing on April 12th. Most of those hits can be easily explained by Facebook and the people who followed her. But many of those hits didn't make sense to either of us. Dana knew nobody in Iceland, Indonesia, Turkey and a few other countries around the world. This final post is also written for those people who didn't follow Dana on Facebook but did follow her blog. Some of whom have asked me how she was doing because they didn't know what had happened since her last post.
Dana's last post was February 6th and she was moving to a new chemo medicine by the name of Gemzar. The first oral medicine, Xeloda, basically did nothing to slow the growth of cancer which was spreading through her bones quickly and moving beyond her lungs and into other organs. Xeloda was the medicine the City of Hope confirmed would have been the first drug they would have used to fight the cancer. As Dana had written before, with chemo drugs you get what works for the majority of patients and hope it works against the strand of cancer you are fighting. You play the percentages and hope it works.
The Gemzar was a quick infusion that took less than an hour to receive. It came with many of the side effects that Dana had dealt with before. The worst part was the Nuepogen shots she had to give herself 3 days a week to keep her white cell count up. The pain was constant and only continued to get worse throughout the month of February and into March. Dana's strength deteriorated quickly over a 4 week period of time and her pain increased to levels that oral medicine could no longer keep up with. She was given a pain pump of liquid Dilaudid which would give her a constant feed of medicine by IV to help control the pain. Dana despised the pain medicines, the side effects they caused, and refused to give herself an extra dose as the pain levels increased at different times throughout the day. She wanted to be alert and able to talk with the kids when they got home from school. If that meant she was in more pain than the doctors wanted her in, so be it. She wanted to hear about the kids day at school.
By early March, Dana was becoming confined to the house and spent the days with me and her mom. If she left the house it was to watch Avery play volleyball or the boys play baseball. She needed the help of her wheel chair which drove her crazy. A few of her closest friends were able to see her but she suffered heavily from the side effects of the Dilaudid and the hallucinations caused by pain medicines that are morphine based. Her diet was limited to yogurt and cream of wheat, she would eat just enough to get in her daily supply of pills and then stop eating. Feeding her became harder and harder and she would eventually allow only me or Davis to feed her. All three of the kids stuck by her and never flinched as she grew more weak by the day. Davis was another level, he took care of her every chance he got and showed more courage and patience than any kid should have to.
Dana was moved to hospice care and from our house to her patents on April 7th. A few days after the move to her parents, the hospice doctor spent an hour or so with us and went through a booklet that basically describe her current condition and why she had only a short window of time left. I don't know if Dana ever opened her eyes during the entire hour, but at the end she started talking to the doctor as if she had understood everything said. The doctor left and Dana was as alert as she had been in weeks. After weeks of not wanting to see anybody outside of family and her best friend from high school, Dana rattled of a list of people she wanted to see and see them now. It was the Friday of the kids spring break and all the kids were at her parents house. The kids and I were able to spend time with an alert and talkative Dana, one last time. She hadn't let a moment go by where the kids didn't know how much she loved them and that our expectations for their future would never change. As Dana got finished telling us how we would all be okay, everybody who she asked to see started to arrive.
Everybody I called dropped everything and came to see Dana. She got to see everyone she asked for and she was happy. Her last ounces of energy were spent talking to her kids and the people she had spent the last 8 years chasing around to baseball games with to watch our kids play, her cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and closest friends. Within hours her burst of energy was over and Dana went to sleep and only woke up a few times over the last 48 hours of her life to talk to Johnna and Ina, her best friends from high school. Dana passed away at 3:30 on Sunday afternoon with only me and her parents by her side. She did not want the kids with her, she had been with her mom when her grandmother passed away about 10 years ago. It was something she was never able to forget and didn't want the kids to have that image of her. Davis was on a baseball field where he always seems to be, Avery was playing in a volleyball tournament wearing Dana's # 15, and Kyle was with my sister and had spent the weekend goofing off with his cousins.
Dana was gone but everything that we had planned months earlier in Santa Barbara made sure that things went exactly as she had wanted. Dana knew who she wanted to speak, who she wanted as pallbearers, and who would cater the reception. She had forgotten no detail. She had joked with the lady at Eternal Valley back in January that this was going to be a big party. For Dana, this was never anything but her party and it was bigger than I think any of us anticipated. The eulogy was delivered by Brian Jacobs, Dana had gone to elementary school with Brian and he has been one of my closest friends for more than 30 years. He put more time and effort into his speech than Dana and I could have ever asked for. He was great and so where the next three speakers Johnna, Ina and her cousin Ryan. It was a long rough day, but it was a party she would have loved.
You can't imagine how much you need or will miss somebody until they are gone. You can try and convince yourself how hard things will be, but until you wake up by yourself for the first time in almost 20 years you can't imagine how alone you feel. Nights are miserable and the days are not much better, but you realize quickly how many friends you have. In the two years that have now passed since her diagnosis we we were never alone. Dana's mom was at almost every doctors appointment we went to, her dad was at the house when we got home. My brother called me everyday to see what I needed and would have done anything I asked. My sister took care of keeping kids moving to practices, games and school projects. Johnna drove from San Diego every week to help, somedays she got good Dana others she got the sick as can be Dana, but she always came back.
Everybody has kept coming back. My oldest friend took the first week off after Dana passed away to make sure I was up and moving. He set up lunches, brought dinner for 30 people, and was a stand up comic for my kids at the Dodgers game. 16 weeks later he is still making sure I am up and moving. Dana's mom is still at our house 7 days a week, sometimes to fold laundry, other times to bring dinner. My sister, Dana's dad, and my parents are still getting the kids to practices, and my brother still calls to see what I need. The friends I called and asked to rush over and see Dana have never left. I hear from one or all of them every week. They show up to watch Davis play baseball or offer to go grocery shopping and take the kids school shopping.
Things are still hard, I don't know when that will change. But things are not all bad. Its been another summer following Davis around baseball and football fields. He has had a great summer playing QB for the freshman football team at Valencia and was moved up to the JV baseball team where he will play catcher next season. Dana's cousin Ryan took a team to Cooperstown, NY for a big baseball tournament and Kyle got to go play for him. Avery plays volleyball as often as she can and continues to become more like Dana everyday. The four of us stick close together and spend a lot of time with Dana's parents who have rarely missed the kids play anything over the years.
I don't know exactly how to thank all the people who have helped us over the last two years. The amount of time people have spent going out of their way to make things easier for us is humbling. I don't have the words to properly thank you all for what you did for all of us but I hope you all realize how much it has meant to us.
