Thank You!

To each of you who take the time to visit this blog THANK YOU. I truly love and appreciate each of you and your care and concern for my sweetheart. Each day is precious and we pray for one more day with quality of life. Kathie is declining rapidly and demonstrates significant confusion caused by the brain tumors. She sleeps a lot and this will continue to increase. For those of you wanting to visit, please know that your visits are precious and feel welcome to come spend time with her. For those who have volunteered to help spend time with her, thank you. Your help gives me peace of mind as I continue to try and keep my life going. The hours I spend away from home trying to work are much easier knowing that all of you are helping make sure Kathis is well cared for. I would also like to recognize the help from Hearts for Hospice. They are helping us care for Kathie's medical needs and providing support to us as a family. With our combined efforts Kathie will know she is loved and each day that remains will be one day more we can cherish. Love Raymond

Sunday Dinner

Where We Have Been

In June 2009, our family was devastated to hear the words, "Mom's cancer is back." After being cancer free for 5 years, our mom had been experiencing some chest pain and thought she may be having a heart attack. The scans in the ER revealed something far different. She had 5 tumors throughout her lungs and sternum. Later scans would reveal tumors throughout her rib cage, skull, spine, and thighs. Within a month of her initial ER visit she was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic breast cancer. Since her diagnosis she has undergone multiple surgeries, rounds of chemo therapy, and also radiation.

The doctors tried to give us hope by helping us to understand that her cancer would be controllable but not curable. Last summer we discovered that the cancer had spread even further . . . the MRI showed 10 detectable tumors on her brain. The cancer has continued to progress and the doctors have done the best they could possibly do. About a month and half ago we made the difficult decision to bring in hospice care in hopes of making her more comfortable and to allow her the best quality of life in the short time that she has left.

This blog has been created in hopes of updating all those who love and care for Kathie Caldwell on her current condition. We also hope that it will help coordinate the efforts to be with her during the next several weeks. The primary page will give recent updates on her condition. There are separate tabs that contain a calendar of those who are spending time with her and a memories page that will share thoughts from all of you. Those memories will later be collected into stories that can be shared with her grandchildren. If you have memories that you would like to share please forward them to me at matthew.g.caldwell@gmail.com

We truly appreciate everything you do to express your concern and your offers to help during this time. It is amazing to see the tender mercies that constantly surround us.

- Matthew Caldwell