desperate support
Hi I am new at this desparate also this is a letter from my neice sent to my daughter who has a 4 year girl with luekemia, I just wanted to share it and hopefully someone out there can give us some extra hope and strength as my nephew has only just turned 40yrs old.
Hi Philly and Lance and whanau, thanks so much for your email, all contact with the whanau means so much to Moko and me especially at this time. Moko has Gastric Adenocarcinoma which I guess is a long winded name for stomach cancer. On Wednesday the 7th Mok went to our local GP after complaining to me of pain in the back and puku(stomach). 6 weeks earlier his doctor had a misdiagnosis of asthma and put him on 3 different asthma pumps. At that stage Mok was having breathlessness from the pain radiating from his back and puke. At first the steroids in the pumps probably helped mask the pain but he starting moaning again to me about the pain so I told him to GET TO THE DR! His normal dr was away so he saw my dr who told him she was sure from what he was telling her he had stomach ulcers and put him on some meds to take the acid away from them. She also took blood tests. At 4 pm that avo another dr rang up to see where he was, he was at warewhare with me. That Dr told him his bloods came up saying he was anaemic which meant that he was bleeding internally. She wasn’t too worried at this stage but needed him to come up and repeat his bloods in the morning. We weren’t too worried either at this stage and both of us started getting ready for work that night(Mok was doing security in town and I was going out to Benneydale meat works to do security out there). Just after 5pm the doctor rang back to say a group of drs had got together to review his case and they had decided to send him up to Waikato Hospital immediately by ambulance, they were quite concerned about the bleeding and were worried he would bleed out. We got up there about 7.30pm, I had rang both our mums and Lucky and Tupu were soon there with us. The doctors were convinced that he had stomach ulcers but told us not to worry that meds would take care of it. They also said that they would put a camera down his throat to his tummy to have a look in the morning. They transferred him to a ward for the rest of the night(it was 2.00am by then) and we went to stay at Aunty May’s the night. I got up the hospital at 8.30am and they were just wheeling him down for his camera job. By this time my mum was on her way. The camera showed up a large bleeding ulcer in his tummy that looked to be cancerous to the doctors so they took biopsys. They then booked him in for a CT scan later that day to see if it had spread to any of his vitals eg liver, lungs etc. Those came back as negative so things were looking up, or so we thought. A team of doctors met with us to say they were 99% positive that the biopsies would be positive and that they wanted to do surgery to put cameras into slits in his tummy to check for any spread. If there was no spread then they would operate and remove most of his puke leaving a little one similar to a tummy staple operation. The scary thing was that they told us with this type of cancer that only 25% of people make it to 5 years after this opp. Then it would only be a matter of time before it caught him. Unfortunately when they did the surgery into his tummy they found it had spread to his lymph glands and also to the lining of his stomach. This meant they would not operate now. The only thing they can do for Mok at this time is radiotherapy for 5 days to put a crust around the ulcer to stop it from bleeding and maybe give him what is called palliative chemo. It is not full on chemo where the hair falls out etc it is a mild chemo that is aimed at slowing down the cancer spread as much as they can to give Mok some more time and maybe more quality of life. Our dr has told us that we are probably looking at months instead of years. Unfortunately we got a letter this morning telling us that he has been put on a waiting list and may not see anyone for 8 – 9 weeks, emergency cases go before him as they might be cured. I am going to fight for them to see him asap as I think 8 – 9 weeks will be too late to do any good anyway. I have cried buckets and as you can imagine the days pass and you go numb with acceptance. Mok is in good spirits and is determined to fight this as long as he can, we are looking at alternatives at the moment and yes turning to God for some guidance and prayer. All the different religions and beliefs in both our whanau are all working hard for us, we will take all the good wishes and energy that comes our way. Our kids, Te Kapuarangi, 15, Toia,13 and Toma 9 have all been told that their Dad has cancer but they don’t know how serious it is yet. Te Kapu is down in Wellington with Jody at the moment, he just wants to run away, Toia is sticking close to her dad, I have had heaps of talks with her. Toma doesn’t really understand what cancer is but we will try to let him know as much as we can. In the meantime we have to wind our company up and spend as much quality time as we can. Mok wants to go up to the top on the North Island to the lighthouse and to the South Island as he has never seen them. I feel absolutely exhausted just dealing with little things and try to wade through each day always watching him to see if he’s ok. Both our whanau have gathered around to help as much as possible and my mum is going to stick it through with us. All the Otimi aunty and uncles have rang or come to see us and a good number of the cuzzies too. We didn’t know about Nakaia and our love goes out to you and Philly and your whanau. We only found out about her when we started asking the whanau if there were any other cancers in the Otimi whanau. Well Philly thats about it for now, we are just taking each day as it comes at the moment but all the prayers and good wishes definitely help!
Lotsa Love
Kiri, Moko and kids