Losing a parent rips the heart out of your chest, and fills it with a heaviness that now YOU must step into those shoes as the authority, the one with all the answers, the one who comforts others.
When you look back, please focus on the part where your mother was capable to say, “Enough. Let me go,” and then you honored her decision. Truly, you gave her no greater gift!
To everyone: have this discussion with your loved ones. Let them know how much, how far to go, and when to say enough.
For me, the “one who got away” had started smoking at age 14 (she had large boobs and was undoubtedly in the “cool kids” clique) and continued until the mid-90’s.
Somewhere around 1996 she was diagnosed with “lung cancer” (when Mother had it, we were told there were at least 5 different “Lung cancers”). Stops smoking.
Aug 2001 - diagnosed with “Cancer of the Brain” and told she would be dead in 3 months.
Nov 22 2001 - dead, right on schedule.
Why didn’t anyone catch the spread until there were only 90 days left?
Now you know why, after 60 years and millions and millions spent on “Cancer” research at all levels, we still used highly toxic chemicals and (gamma ray?) radiation to try to extend life.
By now there should have either been a pill to cure or a vaccine to prevent. Right.
I have the medical power of attorney. My cousin, an RN, is in charge of that. The cousin will follow my wishes, and has not a scrap of sentimentality about death. If something happens to her, it’s my next younger sister. She’s not a nurse or doctor, but a pharmacist, and speaks the medical language.
Get someone on a document you know will not cave to the pleas of other family, but will do what YOU want.
Because until then her immune system held it in check or it was dormant, and when it sprang up again it was like wildfire. Also, the universe is not fair. Also, you can do everything right and still not win.
May I suggest the book The Emperor of All Maladies for a history of the treatment of cancer extending back millenia, and an explanation of why your assumption that we “should have either been a pill to cure or a vaccine to prevent” all forms of it is naive.
In actual fact we do have vaccines for a very few types of cancer, and for some we have treatments effective for 90+% of the time even if said treatments are still quite toxic. We don’t have effective treatment for a lot other types of cancer.
Sometimes we use chemo/radiation/surgery to attempt a cure (or at least a significant time of remission). Sometimes we use it to extend life even when we know we can’t cure it. In some cases we use them to reduce symptoms - the radiation my husband was supposed to get wasn’t to cure his cancer or even extend his life, it was to reduce the agonizing pain of spinal metastases. Sometimes these treatments work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they work for awhile then the cancer cells mutate and evolve and the treatment no longer works.
cancer’s insidiousness is because it’s your body’s own cells going berzerk. they’re not identifiable as foreign bodies like bacteria or viruses. best we can do is excise malignant growths, and use chemotherapy to indiscriminately kill fast-dividing cells (all of them; 's why chemo makes you temporarily sterile and causes you to lose your hair.)
In 2012, Mom participated in the wonderful but ill-fated cable series It Takes a Choir, in which the host/director traveled to different communities and put together choirs which would learn and perform two songs in just one week. The awful USA network did not have faith in this series and dumped all eight episodes into just one day’s viewing at the end of 2014 instead of running it for eight weeks in 2013 like they were supposed to. :mad:
Anyway, I am posting the last part of the episode “Senioritis” below. You can see the whole thing, in separate segments without ads, on YouTube.
Mom is seen at 1:39 and again with her little solo at 2:48.
Thank you for inviting me to vent, which I will do below…
I am going on with my life, working, computer, occasional concert, chalk art festival, shopping, errands, cat care, walks with neighbor, chats or visits with friends, Easter with cousins.
But… a decent night’s sleep is still a crap-shoot. Aunt Flo should have come for a visit more than two weeks ago. And I’m taking stomach acid reducers.
I am seeing the doctor in several days to report these issues–and to schedule a mammo and my very first colonoscopy, since I’m at that age.
I wonder if I should see a psych doc who specializes in grief/bereavement.
I did get my follow-up breast ultrasound from last year. It’s all good.
About your aunt, while I was getting divorced she was late to me too, and I was scared shitless. Then her arrival was… unusual. If I were you I’d keep preventative measures to hand at all times.
Saw doc, got set up for tests and procedures, blood tested, back again on May 4 for results and maybe prescriptions, and man, I put on some pounds in the past month or so. Not a lot but noticeable. Going to rejoin a gym with a pool and swim it off which might also be a stress reliever.
And…I got the ID card and rec letter you need here in CA in order to get another type of medicinal plant. I tried some and it was relaxing, although it did give me the munchies, which is not what I need.
