The rest of the afternoon included a visit from an oncologist with Jackson Oncology, the group that sees cancer patients at St. Dominic’s. He had been in contact with Lynette’s oncologists at UMMC and they had reviewed the results of the December 7 and 8 scans. Significant “disease progression” was evident. For the fifth or sixth time, the same sentence was used: “This is a very aggressive cancer.” I finally grasped what they were saying. They couldn’t make it go away and they couldn’t slow it down any more.

At some point during the afternoon, Lynette went down for a “pleural drain” on her right lung. This would be a “comfort measure” to allow us to drain fluid off her right lung, as we already could for her left lung. That drainage process DID ease her breathing, but also caused her pain. She needed a dilaudid injection (at the hospital) or a pain pill (at home) before we tried it,

Lynette’s sisters were coming from North Mississippi to see her. I asked Guyanne Little Hargrove to go to the parsonage in Harrisville to collect Luke. Sarah would be coming from Millsaps. I was about to have the hardest conversation with my children I would ever have.

Lynette was awake and aware of what was going on. I asked her if she was mad at me for “giving up” and asking for a hospice referral. I’m ever so grateful that she said “You silly man. I could never be mad at you. I know what we have to do.”