Life in Just in Case

Life is slowly going on. I’m visiting more regularly with my parents. So, I’m still quarantining pretty strictly for the rest of life. I don’t want to risk bringing it down to them. I’m getting paid to do some summer work at school on technology. It’s been a bit stressful, but it’s nice having a little bit of normal in my life. 3 or 4 days a week, getting up and going to school. I’ve done some work in my room, but honestly, haven’t had a ton of time for that. We have no idea what school will look like in the fall. Right now, numbers in Louisiana are going crazy. There’s talk of us going back to phase 1. The way I am living life - that won’t mean a huge difference. But, I don’t know that people would follow the rules anyway. They aren’t now.
I’ve shared about one of my best friends fighting a brain tumor. We’ve been very protective of her since her surgery a couple of weeks ago. We haven’t gone to see her, but we’ve texted all day every day, we’ve zoomed. We’re just so nervous about risking her health with a face to face. It’s clear that she’s been struggling. Her husband hasn’t told us a lot. (He hasn’t told anyone a lot.) A couple of days ago, though, he asked us to try to come see her if we could. I told him that we were so reluctant to, because her health is so fragile. One of our friends went by after a meeting. (She wore a mask and stayed far away from her. She told us it was bad. Her husband has said we can just come in to the house, we don’t need to worry about staying away or outside. And he opened up a little, that he’s really seeing the effects of the cancer. Their son who lives in Portland came in for 2 weeks (so we aren’t going over). Their other son works in NOLA and lives there during week.He’s in this weekend, too. So the 4 of them will be together for the first time in quite a while. She’s supposed to go back to MD Anderson for a followup in a couple of weeks. (Their son from Portland will be here until the day before.) When he came in, he realized how bad she was and encouraged (forced) her husband to call the doctor. He described what was happening (sleeping all day and all night, lots of confusion, she’ll send us text messages that make no sense, refusing to eat or drink, etc) He agreed that it sounded like the tumor has grown again (a month ago she had an 8 hour surgery to remove all they could of the tumor - it’s just super aggressive). The doctor prescribed steroids to try and reduce some of the swelling in her brain. In short - the race is almost over. It’s been so hard. She has talked so many times about watching her mom go through aggressive chemo and suffering awful side effects from it. It led to hard feelings between her and her dad because she didn’t agree with the treatments. Her mom was ready to stop, but dad wasn’t. (My friend was in her 40s when her mom died.) She has lived in fear of going through that herself. Once she was diagnosed, the fear got worse. That makes it harder watching her go through this. (She’s doing one chemo pill a month at this rate. They did radiation, and really struggled with it, this time. Two of us live near her. We’ve told her husband when they get back, to call us for help. We can do groceries, help clean the house, sit with her and give him a break, whatever they need. As hard as it us for the group of us, for her kids and husband it’s s much harder. I don’t know how much they’ve told her granddaughter.