When I was younger, my mother always said she would die young. Since all the people in my family always walked around talking about how sick they were and how they were going to die any minute - including my grandmother who lived to just 6 months short of her 98th birthday and a cousin who has been at death's door now for over 50 years and last I saw is still going strong - I didn't pay full attention to her words.
Today would have been my mother's 69th birthday. I miss her something fierce and still cry on my long commute to my job at least three days out of five remembering something about those last 10 months of her life as the cancer ate away at her while I stood by helplessly, urging her and her doctors to take better care of her health, never being taken seriously.
I try to make myself remember the good things. Like our silly game we played, going to a flea market or a Goodwill and having a little contest to see who could come up with the tackiest thing. It was a game we loved, and we each won an equal number of times. (The ability to spot tacky is a genetically passed-down trait for us Southern women, y'all.) Like the love of books, which she also passed down to me.
Or like her statement that I was the great shame of her life. Yes, that is a good thing.
I have evolved to feel sorry for my mother who was brought up in a culture of misogynistic shame. Because of this, she hid her pregnancy with me, and drove herself to the hospital on October 30, 1969, to labor and give birth to me alone. No one in my family, save my mother, knew I existed for the first couple of days I was on this earth. She had strongly considered giving me up for adoption. And then my grandfather showed up at the hospital. He had been looking for her to tell her that her own mother was in the hospital. He convinced my mother that she was better than the shame, and so was I. She called my dad and told him he was a father. He showed up at the hospital and stepped up. I have no idea how his mother took the news, but I know she spoiled me rotten my entire life.
It took me until after my mother died to see this as a fairy tale - I got to live. I got to grow up with my family.
I wanted to talk to her about it. Other than one phone call she made to me at work, screaming and crying, calling me "the great shame of [her] life," we never really got to talk about it. Every time I brought it up, she made it clear it was not for discussion. Then she got sick and I did not want to bring up anything else unpleasant for her to deal with.
So I feel like I am missing a piece of my history. Maybe that's why I like digging in genealogy and am fascinated by the past.
Maybe that's why the person I feel most comfortable with at present is the narrator of my novel who is long dead and yet spilling his own confessions and history into my fingers as I type.
Maybe that's why I feel drawn to champion those who are not championed and empower them to champion themselves.
No one should live in shame.
No one should apologize for their existence.
No one should suffer at the hands of another and be made to feel "less than."
No one should be unwanted.
Happy birthday, Mommy. I miss you. I am still so proud of you I have no words. You are still strong.
Showing posts with label cancer sucks ass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cancer sucks ass. Show all posts
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Death, Dying, Endings and Me
It's been a strange day.
I have been living through this grief process shit now for over 2 years. On June 13, 2012, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She died on June 12, 2013, one day short of a year from that diagnosis. One day short of a year to make decisions, know that the end was more than likely imminent, and get "her affairs in order." Except she didn't. In the midst of dealing with the fact that I can't call and kvetch or bitch or cry to her, I am having my guts ripped out dealing with the twisting in the wind of her estate, her dilapidated hoarder house, giving away her horses, discovering that her belongings were stolen, house broken into repeatedly, memory disgraced and disrespected, funeral not paid for, and the grave has no headstone.
Deep breath.
For the past three weeks or so, my dog has been eating less and less, and becoming more and more lethargic. Today my dad paid for a vet visit with his vet for my dog. Our vet four days ago told us it was a "sour stomach" and nothing was wrong. My dad's vet says that it's elevated calcium and liver enzymes, and most likely parathyroid cancer. Either we do an expensive blood test or we watch him get weaker and weaker and die. So we did the blood test. And now we wait a week. And then go from there. I want him well, but failing that, I want the absence of pain for him.
Meanwhile, I look at another sentient being who has given me absolutely nothing but unconditional love and watch him approach death.
I know that to live is to eventually die.
I get it.
This fact does not make it hurt any less.
And of course, life conspires to cry along with me.
A week ago I received Ariel Gore's memoir, The End of Eve and just finished it today. I am bereft with sorrow for her, and reliving my own mother's illness and death, making the inevitable comparisons. Intense writing at its best, this is a talented author's masterpiece. She has always written in such a way that I felt her words, but this hit me on another whole level. Highly recommend it.
Right now my life is full of changes. It has been an overwhelming couple of years. In the midst of all of this, I have discovered I am living a life I hate, and basically I want to escape being myself. I am discovering what I really want to do, but also what has blocked me from it - an insidious self-hatred that poisons everything I do. I am tired of trying to analyze its source. I am more interested myself in the psychic surgery to remove its roots. Failing that, I look toward the ultimate escape.
To answer Mary Oliver's rhetorical question, what to do with my one precious human life?
Fix it or forget it.
(Image from URL: http://www.mailman.columbia.edu/academic-departments/epidemiology/research-service/death-poverty)
I have been living through this grief process shit now for over 2 years. On June 13, 2012, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She died on June 12, 2013, one day short of a year from that diagnosis. One day short of a year to make decisions, know that the end was more than likely imminent, and get "her affairs in order." Except she didn't. In the midst of dealing with the fact that I can't call and kvetch or bitch or cry to her, I am having my guts ripped out dealing with the twisting in the wind of her estate, her dilapidated hoarder house, giving away her horses, discovering that her belongings were stolen, house broken into repeatedly, memory disgraced and disrespected, funeral not paid for, and the grave has no headstone.
Deep breath.
For the past three weeks or so, my dog has been eating less and less, and becoming more and more lethargic. Today my dad paid for a vet visit with his vet for my dog. Our vet four days ago told us it was a "sour stomach" and nothing was wrong. My dad's vet says that it's elevated calcium and liver enzymes, and most likely parathyroid cancer. Either we do an expensive blood test or we watch him get weaker and weaker and die. So we did the blood test. And now we wait a week. And then go from there. I want him well, but failing that, I want the absence of pain for him.
Meanwhile, I look at another sentient being who has given me absolutely nothing but unconditional love and watch him approach death.
I know that to live is to eventually die.
I get it.
This fact does not make it hurt any less.
And of course, life conspires to cry along with me.
A week ago I received Ariel Gore's memoir, The End of Eve and just finished it today. I am bereft with sorrow for her, and reliving my own mother's illness and death, making the inevitable comparisons. Intense writing at its best, this is a talented author's masterpiece. She has always written in such a way that I felt her words, but this hit me on another whole level. Highly recommend it.
Right now my life is full of changes. It has been an overwhelming couple of years. In the midst of all of this, I have discovered I am living a life I hate, and basically I want to escape being myself. I am discovering what I really want to do, but also what has blocked me from it - an insidious self-hatred that poisons everything I do. I am tired of trying to analyze its source. I am more interested myself in the psychic surgery to remove its roots. Failing that, I look toward the ultimate escape.
To answer Mary Oliver's rhetorical question, what to do with my one precious human life?
Fix it or forget it.
(Image from URL: http://www.mailman.columbia.edu/academic-departments/epidemiology/research-service/death-poverty)
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Updates on my life...
I dropped off the blogisphere after my attempt at the topic du jour exercise, and I do have the desire to drop back in.
At this point in my life I need a distraction from the stress and overwhelming, oppressive responsibilities in my life.
Yet I don't want blogging to be yet another responsibility, another "have to" in a long, long list of have-tos....
Yesterday I spoke with my mother's home health nurse. She suggested that we look into Hospice at this time for my mother. In the back of my mind, ever since I learned of her diagnosis last June, I have known this is a possibility. I knew that people get cancer, that cancer can be fatal. I knew that mother had this thing called cancer. But I consciously fought against making that connection.
The home health nurse stated that people who get discharged from home health and into Hospice sometimes do get better and get discharged out of Hospice and back into home health. The thing is, I don't consider home health to be for the healthy. So Hospice, to my mind, are the people who are even farther removed from health. She said she had this conversation with my mother two days ago. My mother has not brought it up in conversation with me. Of course, we don't have too many long conversations as she usually falls asleep when she is talking to me. Staying awake is not her strong suit since she is now taking Percocet and morphine. So I have no idea what to do or where to go from here except into the dark night with her. And hope one of us keeps from losing her mind to guide the other.
In the midst of all this, life goes on. Work demands more than ever. If 12-14 hours was the accepted minimum, it is demanding 16-18 hours now. I just don't have it anymore. So I rush and I delegate more than I ever have, then I stress about what I delegate, so I stay awake worrying away and not sleeping the hours that I am not there.
My oldest is getting ready to go to her first prom this year. She has fanagled going to a prom as a sophomore, and she - with typical self-centeredness and lack of concern for others that marks all humans her age - is characteristically hateful and cutting whenever she does not get her way. She wants the last money for the family's groceries to be spent on her nail polish. When she decides she doesn't like that $8 nail polish after all, she wants fake nails bought for her. Then she breezes in and has a meltdown because I won't give her my only decent make-up. Then I have to keep an open ear, because whenever she is denied her way, she turns around and says something cutting and cruel to her little sister, passing on the misery.
My youngest reels from being a victim of her sister's hormonal maelstrom to watching her beloved grandmother sink farther and farther away from her to spending less and less time with me as I try to support the household financially single-handedly, show her the love kids need to grow up at least somewhat functional, and make sure she has clean clothes that match somewhat (her father is color-blind). It is a testament to her strong personality that she takes each day as it comes, expresses her emotions clearly and appropriately, and keeps her spirits up. I want to be like her when I grow up.
So pardon me while I regroup. My posts, I hope, won't always be dark. I will try to keep managing my depression while pretending to be Super-Boss, Super-Mom, and the part of Supportive Daughter.
And in the back of my mind, I will dream of the day I will be a real writer.
If I live through this.
At this point in my life I need a distraction from the stress and overwhelming, oppressive responsibilities in my life.
Yet I don't want blogging to be yet another responsibility, another "have to" in a long, long list of have-tos....
Yesterday I spoke with my mother's home health nurse. She suggested that we look into Hospice at this time for my mother. In the back of my mind, ever since I learned of her diagnosis last June, I have known this is a possibility. I knew that people get cancer, that cancer can be fatal. I knew that mother had this thing called cancer. But I consciously fought against making that connection.
The home health nurse stated that people who get discharged from home health and into Hospice sometimes do get better and get discharged out of Hospice and back into home health. The thing is, I don't consider home health to be for the healthy. So Hospice, to my mind, are the people who are even farther removed from health. She said she had this conversation with my mother two days ago. My mother has not brought it up in conversation with me. Of course, we don't have too many long conversations as she usually falls asleep when she is talking to me. Staying awake is not her strong suit since she is now taking Percocet and morphine. So I have no idea what to do or where to go from here except into the dark night with her. And hope one of us keeps from losing her mind to guide the other.
In the midst of all this, life goes on. Work demands more than ever. If 12-14 hours was the accepted minimum, it is demanding 16-18 hours now. I just don't have it anymore. So I rush and I delegate more than I ever have, then I stress about what I delegate, so I stay awake worrying away and not sleeping the hours that I am not there.
My oldest is getting ready to go to her first prom this year. She has fanagled going to a prom as a sophomore, and she - with typical self-centeredness and lack of concern for others that marks all humans her age - is characteristically hateful and cutting whenever she does not get her way. She wants the last money for the family's groceries to be spent on her nail polish. When she decides she doesn't like that $8 nail polish after all, she wants fake nails bought for her. Then she breezes in and has a meltdown because I won't give her my only decent make-up. Then I have to keep an open ear, because whenever she is denied her way, she turns around and says something cutting and cruel to her little sister, passing on the misery.
My youngest reels from being a victim of her sister's hormonal maelstrom to watching her beloved grandmother sink farther and farther away from her to spending less and less time with me as I try to support the household financially single-handedly, show her the love kids need to grow up at least somewhat functional, and make sure she has clean clothes that match somewhat (her father is color-blind). It is a testament to her strong personality that she takes each day as it comes, expresses her emotions clearly and appropriately, and keeps her spirits up. I want to be like her when I grow up.
So pardon me while I regroup. My posts, I hope, won't always be dark. I will try to keep managing my depression while pretending to be Super-Boss, Super-Mom, and the part of Supportive Daughter.
And in the back of my mind, I will dream of the day I will be a real writer.
If I live through this.
Friday, January 25, 2013
TdJ: My Mother's Health
On my Topic du Jour List, this was listed as a worry. Since the middle of last year, this is a daily worry of mine. Prior to that, it was one of those nagging, ever-present but sometimes-pushed-aside-for-crises worries.
My entire life I was somehow certain that my mother's health was not good. She herself traces it back to being pregnant and giving birth to my sister - one of the greatest joys of her life, ironically - in 1972. That's just over 40 years of (not so) silent suffering for my mom. She had a Cesarean birth for my sister, then had to feed my sister through a tube for the first few months of her life. Then she had an appendicitis which ruptured in the late 70s. Then she developed septicaemia from that. Then she had an ovarian tumor which was benign when I was in high school and had a total hysterectomy. Then she broke her foot or ankle or some shit. Then she was in an automobile accident about 2 or 3 years ago and broke her back. Add to this an absolute addiction to Coca-Cola and Type II diabetes which she wouldn't stop drinking Cokes for so she has to shoot herself up with two types of insulin. She has always been, in one way or another, a fucked up little pup.
Then this past spring and summer she started urinating blood. She ignored it, being too focused on babysitting my nephew (who happens to have autism) to schedule and attend a medical appointment. The quack she calls a primary care physician is fond of just calling in an antibiotic for her without actually seeing or examining her. However, the day she finally made the call, at the urging of some woman at her church (having ignored my sister's and my suggestions/urgings/pleadings/veiled threats), luckily her quack was unavailable. She ended up being placed that day in the care of a nurse practitioner, who actually made her come in, give a urine specimen, and who immediately referred her to a urologist. The long and short of it is my mother had kidney and bladder cancer. One kidney, ureter and part of the bladder was surgically removed in August, 2012.
She spent the fall and winter of 2012 in chemotherapy, 12 days in all, (four sets of three days for you math whizzes out there). A scan on the last few days of 2012 showed that the chemo was effective in getting rid of the kidney cancer, but there is still a "dark shadow" in what remains in her bladder (cue vampire music here). On the 14th of January, she began radiation treatments for this. She hates radiation as much as chemo. Other than her trips to get the radiation and a stop to buy more junk food on the way back if she isn't too tired, she does not leave her bed. She has even lessened her obsessions. She is reading more, and even reading more than magazines and newspapers, so that is a good thing. But other than that, it is hard to watch her consciously make decisions in her lifestyle that are working against her healing. She has always been a junk food junkie, and has sneaked and rationalized drinking Cokes all throughout her diagnosis of diabetes, even through being placed on insulin. She is a pessimist about her own life, always has been. There is no magic wand or formula for me to get her to eat a real fruit or vegetable, even when I guilt her into drinking one of my protein fruit smoothies (22g protein, 3 servings of fruit). There is no way she is ever going to drink water instead of carbonated beverages.
This has been a long, hard road for her. Even more thankless, I would hazard a guest, than birthing me. I do know that there is no way I can "feel her pain" or understand. I don't have cancer and don't go to doctors. I feign health even when I feel like shit, and I have no patience for illness in my own body. I am not so naive that I think I am going to save her. I may want to. And I do feel like when all this is over, she will have a good prognosis. At least I hope so.
The Serenity Prayer states, in my version:
My entire life I was somehow certain that my mother's health was not good. She herself traces it back to being pregnant and giving birth to my sister - one of the greatest joys of her life, ironically - in 1972. That's just over 40 years of (not so) silent suffering for my mom. She had a Cesarean birth for my sister, then had to feed my sister through a tube for the first few months of her life. Then she had an appendicitis which ruptured in the late 70s. Then she developed septicaemia from that. Then she had an ovarian tumor which was benign when I was in high school and had a total hysterectomy. Then she broke her foot or ankle or some shit. Then she was in an automobile accident about 2 or 3 years ago and broke her back. Add to this an absolute addiction to Coca-Cola and Type II diabetes which she wouldn't stop drinking Cokes for so she has to shoot herself up with two types of insulin. She has always been, in one way or another, a fucked up little pup.
Then this past spring and summer she started urinating blood. She ignored it, being too focused on babysitting my nephew (who happens to have autism) to schedule and attend a medical appointment. The quack she calls a primary care physician is fond of just calling in an antibiotic for her without actually seeing or examining her. However, the day she finally made the call, at the urging of some woman at her church (having ignored my sister's and my suggestions/urgings/pleadings/veiled threats), luckily her quack was unavailable. She ended up being placed that day in the care of a nurse practitioner, who actually made her come in, give a urine specimen, and who immediately referred her to a urologist. The long and short of it is my mother had kidney and bladder cancer. One kidney, ureter and part of the bladder was surgically removed in August, 2012.
She spent the fall and winter of 2012 in chemotherapy, 12 days in all, (four sets of three days for you math whizzes out there). A scan on the last few days of 2012 showed that the chemo was effective in getting rid of the kidney cancer, but there is still a "dark shadow" in what remains in her bladder (cue vampire music here). On the 14th of January, she began radiation treatments for this. She hates radiation as much as chemo. Other than her trips to get the radiation and a stop to buy more junk food on the way back if she isn't too tired, she does not leave her bed. She has even lessened her obsessions. She is reading more, and even reading more than magazines and newspapers, so that is a good thing. But other than that, it is hard to watch her consciously make decisions in her lifestyle that are working against her healing. She has always been a junk food junkie, and has sneaked and rationalized drinking Cokes all throughout her diagnosis of diabetes, even through being placed on insulin. She is a pessimist about her own life, always has been. There is no magic wand or formula for me to get her to eat a real fruit or vegetable, even when I guilt her into drinking one of my protein fruit smoothies (22g protein, 3 servings of fruit). There is no way she is ever going to drink water instead of carbonated beverages.
This has been a long, hard road for her. Even more thankless, I would hazard a guest, than birthing me. I do know that there is no way I can "feel her pain" or understand. I don't have cancer and don't go to doctors. I feign health even when I feel like shit, and I have no patience for illness in my own body. I am not so naive that I think I am going to save her. I may want to. And I do feel like when all this is over, she will have a good prognosis. At least I hope so.
The Serenity Prayer states, in my version:
Goddess,
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can, and
The Wisdom to know the difference.
My mother's health is a topic over which I need serenity. Maybe courage to change my attitude and approach. And wisdom to keep my mouth shut.
Having said all this, I do ask for tonglen or groovy thoughts from you towards her health and healing. If you are one of those Christian types, prayers work too. She is Catholic, so she is all about the prayers.
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