My friend's husband has 8 months to live. [View All]

[CTyankee]

He is 64, thin and very active physically. My friend mentioned to me in early May that he was forgetting things lately and repeating the same things he's just said a few minutes earlier. She was fearful it was Alzeimer's since his Dad had it. A month ago he collapsed while out running. A police cruiser found him and took him to the hospital where they found 3 tumors on his brain. Two were benign and were removed. The third was a malignancy. They took out as much as they could.

He was on chemo til last week when his platelets starting dropping. He will probably have a transfusion this week. He is even more confused than before.

My friend is frantic and exhausted. She knows he can't help it, but she is angry and she feels ashamed of being angry around him. She has to watch over him so he won't take the car out as he says he wants to do. His boss called her and told her his coworkers had noticed his problems at work but they felt they couldn't talk to her about him because of Privacy Act concerns.

Luckily, she has friends and family around, but it isn't enough. She is joining a caregivers group. I have shared with her what I did when my husband was going thru a health crisis, but it isn't the same since my husband's problem was solved by surgery and he is fine.

It feels like my entire circle of women friends are becoming widows...one after another...