No mo chemo ? ! ?

Dad was admitted to the casualty department at Bethany Hospital this morning.

It was not an emergency.  In fact, it was the last dose of a very wonderfully mundane set of chemotherapy doses that have stretched back the last 6 months.

Why at the casualty department?

Because Bethany Hospital’s 125 beds are completely full.  Yesterday there was not a bed free for Dad to get his chemo, so they postponed his final treatment dose till today.  This morning the hospital called up again to say that Dad would be admitted for his chemo in casualty because once again the beds were full and they did not want to delay the treatment further.

So we come to the end of another phase in Mum and Dad’s life.

What a year it has been!

We started out in January with the joyous surprise celebration (for Mum and Dad at least) of 100 years of their combined service to our Lord in India since 1964.

Then at the beginning of March we had a sudden overnight shifting of Dad and Mum to Thane from Mussoorie after we found out that Dad had what turned out to be a cancerous tumour blocking his common biliary duct.  This lead to the miraculous surgery at Bethany Hospital at the end of March – and a wonderful post-op recovery with us here.

But the biopsy showed that there was at least one lymph node was positive for cancer – it had spread at least some beyond the tumor which had been removed.  And so Dad started a 6 month chemo therapy using Gemcitabine as the molecule to knock out as many of the roving cancer cells as possible, while not knocking out too many of Dad’s healthy cells.

Those 6 months are now over.  Today was Dad’s last dose of the 6^th cycle.  Eighteen doses done.  Many prayers said and received from all over.  Much care by the Bethany Hospital staff.  Much love by the Thane Eichers young and old.  And much blessing to us as a family to have Mum and Dad with us for these past 8 months!

We will have a final CT scan next week to see if there is anything that has ‘cropped up’ in the mean time, but by all indications we are now ready to send Mum and Dad home.

So ready to go, that they are planning a quick trip down to Bangalore to meet up with some of their dear ones for a day or two.

No more chemotherapy?  No mo chemo?   That’s what we hope.

We are putting Dad back into the Lord’s hands.  We are very grateful for every day God has given us together.

I told Dad I would take one more picture of him as the last bottle was draining the meds into his chemoport – and then into the aortic vein and then through the heart to the rest of the body.   Here he is at the Bethany Hospital casualty ward getting the last bit of this chemo.

Lets see what the future holds.  Thanks for being along with us on this journey!