My spring is broken. (Long rant about cancer, families and a really shitty season)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have been trying NOT to post this for weeks. But ah ha ha ha… there is more and more shit on the pile…

First of all, my relationship (with Horatio Nelson Muntz) feels like it is circling the drain, and has been for a while. I decided to call it off March 21st. Spring, new beginnings, let’s get on with things, salvage a friendship out of a 9-year relationship. Maybe stay till the end of the school year in this place,then we will both move on, me with my son, him with lots of visits. (He’s not the father, but he is the Dad.)

We decided to put on a good face and host supper, a birthday dinner for my ex mother in law (son’s bio-grandma) and invite that side of the family, the day after Easter. Good Friday, mom in law’s long term partner of 20 years goes into hospice. It’s been a long fight against cancer and while we know the battle was nearing the end, he had been ok midweek. Horatio Nelson Muntz’s dad has also been battling cancer since December, and had a few dizzy spells on Friday and goes into hospital, halfway across the country from where we are.

By Sunday night I am cancelling the dinner because things don’t look too well. In the wee hours of the morning, both men have died. From Cancer. On Easter Monday, my mom in Law’s birthday.

Insanity and travel and drives and 4000 km and funerals ensue over the next week. My mother stays with my son. My dad is getting tested for glaucoma. Unbeknownst to me, my mother in law has a “suspicious mammogram” and over the past month has had a biopsy and was diagnosed last week with Stage 1 Breast Cancer. She is keeping positive and is going to a wellness centre for advice and help for living a healthy lifestyle with cancer. I will be part of her support team all the way.

In this past month, my transgender stepson was viciously attacked, I put my back out, my own son had some school and friendship problems, there have been new and not improved money problems, my application to get career retraining was rejected, and I forget what else. My roommate moved out, (it was an amicable parting, but it still sucks, I miss her!) A few weeks ago, I counted 6 weeks of bad mojo, but I forget when that was. I don’t want to fish for sympathy but I am getting very, very fed up with this day, week, month. It’s May now, when does this shit stop? I think my spring is broken. I want a new one. With sprinkles and a cherry on top.

2

Well you are certainly dealing with an awful lot and I hope your luck changes post haste.

Seriously, you are definitely due.

3

Your spring blows. You deserve some sprinkles. I’m sorry.

4

I’m very sorry to hear about all of these losses.

I wish that I had an answer which was better than “we’re here for you”. Writing about events has always been a good way for me to deal with things in my life. If you have the time… it can’t hurt… and we really are there for you…

5

I thought **I ** was having a rough Spring ****HUGS

6

Thank you. I really have been hanging out on the Dope a lot more often than usual in the past two months… Thread Games has been keeping my brain occupied and just in general reading other people/s problems has been good for me. What really sucks is the feeling that I should be fixing things… which I cannot.

In the first week it felt like a crazy word problem in math class. “If you have one father in law dying 30 km east of you, and another dying 3500 km east of you, a 10 lb ham in the fridge and a 12 year old son who doesn’t want to miss school for any reason, how many pairs of black tights do you need to buy” Then that stopped being funny and I thought of getting a Surgeon General’s warning tattooed on me. “Warning, the Surgeon General has determined that dating me has a detrimental effect on the life of your father*” (Seriously, in 20 years this is the third time a partner’s father has died. One fellow I was dating in 1998’s father died, and my ex-husband’s father died in 2003. Neither relationship survived 6 months after the death, one because we were going in different directions anyway, one because the combination of having a child, his father dying, and out move across the country hastened (maybe) his slide into alcoholism. The current one? I don’t know: at the moment, we are in a holding pattern. I even told people we were split, and then all this shit happened. I seriously cannot think further in the future than we are having chicken for supper tonight,)

7

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but the first thought that came to my mind, after reading your screen name, and that of your ex, and your miserable spring was:

[Nelson Muntz] Ha! Ha! [/Nelson Muntz]

Seriously, though - I hope things improve, pronto!
Hoping for a better Summer.

8

Thanks! I have a twisted sense of humour so this made me LOL.

9

So in a “not drastic, merely miserable” addition to my broken spring, somehow the bedside lamp managed to fall on head and split open my lip this morning. I also have a bruise across my nose. Fantastic. I am also dropping off some items to a women’s shelter today, I will look like a client rather than a benefactor.

Seriously, wtf, lamp? You have spent almost two years in the same spot and never come careening down from my cheat of drawers onto my head when I should be sleeping.

10

May your spring get happier soon.

11

Wow.
Are you sure you’re not actually filming Final Exit VIII - Revenge of the Spring?

12

Why did Humpty Dumpty have a great fall?

To make up for a lousy summer.
Here’s hoping you have a great summer to make up for a lousy spring.

13

Sorry to hear all of this. I don’t have anything useful to say, so here is a belly-dancing polar bear performing for his llama friend: http://i.imgur.com/iGDSNhC.gif

14

Thanks people. The dancing bear is… unique… where did you find that picture? I like the slinky, and the riddle is great.

My mother in law told me I had jam on my lip this morning. I had to tell her no, my household appliances are attacking me!

15

I don’t have a weird sense of humor (sometimes NO sense of humor :smiley: ) and my thing would be to post fuzzy kittens, but I get the sense that isn’t YOUR thing so I’ll refrain. Instead, I offer you hugs and kind thoughts. Not much help, but you’re getting them anyway! I do hope things start on an upward swing soon.

16

Just for fun the Boy’s upper part of his shoe detached from the sole this week. I bought these shoes three weeks ago, (in another story that missed the earlier rant, we picked the shoes up but were waiting over 20 minutes for a complicated return… I ended up chucking the cash on the counter and walking out…this was the day I had thrown my back out and could barely move) so I don’t have a receipt. I re-glued it this morning, but I wish I had done it last night. The toilet overflowed. The cable guy came. (Third time… or actually 4th time since we planned to change companies) It’s all complete insanity here. I know toilets overflowing and shoes falling apart and cable people showing up are all routine things but one rarely hits the trifecta before 830 am.

Does anyone have any information about removing voodoo curses? If it involves sacrificing a goat, may I borrow the one we normally use to initiate new members?

17

Hi folks.
After a few months I thought I should update a few things.
My broken spring is memory. My completely surgically ripped out summer continues.

I thought I mentioned that not only does my Mother in Law have cancer, but in June my mother had an odd mastectomy that had some follow ups and a biopsy. Well the diagnosis came July 25th. Breast cancer. Needing immediate attention.

Things flowed pretty quickly. Our family trip to Scotland was cancelled. My mother saw a surgeon two days later, had a partial mastectomy August 16th. Next week she will h ave a follow up with her surgeon and radiation and or chemo will be scheduled. But the important thing is she is fine. She had day surgery and is back to her own silly normal self (and sent me home because I get “too nursey” with her, which stung, a bit, but I get it.)

My mother in law, who invited herself along on the trip did not purchase cancellation insurance, went on the trip. For the first time since I left her son I find her annoying. She did this big guilt trip on us about not going. Can’t my son and I go with her and my mom and dad stay home? Or go as scheduled and have a trip and a holiday before mom faces cancer? (My parents paid for the trip, of course they want the refund and want all of us to go (minus her) some other time when everyone is healthy).She was phoning my parents 3 or 4 times a day asking about silly details… she was obessed with my mother still lending her a camera… finally she let THAT go. She was awful. Also kept asking me “how bad is Mom’s cancer, it must be worse than hers, right? To need surgery so fast?” “It must be the stress of her moving to British Columbia that caused it, do you think that, or is there some other stress I don’t know about that gave her cancer?”

My mother in law is doing the Budwig Protoco and other bits of hodge-podge woo she is finding on the internet. She is taking some ridiculously expensive vitamins and suppliments. AndEissac Tea. She’s driving me nuts. I tried to be supportive when I thought she was doing this in addition to seeing surgeons etc. I got her to schedule surgery instead of playing a wait and see game. She has cancer in both breasts and some has moved to the lymph nodes of her right one.

Now she is convinced that she is doing better and wants to wait on the surgery. Going to Scotland reduced her stress and now she is better. Her surgery was scheduled on my birthday. I am planning to be with her and overnight at her place, which of course is not the best way to spend a birthday, but its better than watch her give all these internet website charlatans her money.
Really, my crappy spring with dead relatives is starting to look relatively peaceful by comparison. Id rather stand in a funeral palour all day and look at a corpse and shake the friends of every person in town than listen to more of my Mom in Law’s remedies. Or guilt trips.

18

Where’s your ex in all this? Why are you responsible for baby sitting his mother through her cancer problems? His he helping out in anyway toward your mother?

I know she’s your son’s grandmother but I don’t see how that makes you, her ex-daughter-in-law, her caretaker, especially when your own mom needs you.

I think she needs to be introduced to your voicemail lady.
Also: 2016 fucking blows.

19

Jesus.

I’m with Helena. Have a kitten.

(This is my boy Abomination, trust me, the cute picture is the best part of having a kitten. I’m sparing you the part about getting your face gnawed off at 2am.)

20

Wow. I’m not saying this to make excuses for your MIL but to hopefully help you understand her craziness for your own sake. Cancer is such a mind fuck. It pulled the rug out from under me and turned me into things I’d never been: A patient. A victim. Vulnerable. Dependent. Your MIL is freaking. I can’t really describe how she’s feeling regarding the trip. It’s like a survivor’s desperation. She survived cancer so now she has to do something grandiose to prove something (don’t ask me what). I did the same thing in a way, not by going on a trip but by going out and *doing *things every single day. I could eat again. What a relief and an amazing feeling that was. So I ate everything, EVERYTHING, and didn’t stop for a couple months. It was such desperation. I’ve yet to find a good explanation of it.

She’s buying the weird stuff because she’s so afraid of the cancer coming back. She’s trying to find a reason for your mom’s cancer because if there’s a reason, she can avoid it and then she won’t get cancer again.

The mental healing takes much longer than the physical. It was about a year and a half afterwards that I felt like it wasn’t controlling me anymore, and I still occasionally realize I’m processing something.

I hope that helps a little. My best wishes to your mom.