Loading ...Most of you know that its been a rough couple of weeks, but other than the whole peri-menopausal thing, you haven’t heard the whole story.
The past couple of weeks has been a stream of doctor’s appointments and tests, and that’s pretty much the outlook for the foreseeable future. My mom’s been diagnosed with lung cancer, small-cell, fast growing.
Now, don’t think I’ve got a lousy, negative attitude about the whole thing. There are some pretty nifty treatments these days, that they didn’t have 20 years ago when my dad had cancer. Not to mention the tumor is small, and hasn’t metastasized.
To be honest, my mother’s emphysema is a far more urgent matter, and at this point the cancer barely even enters into the plethora of her health issues. The emphysema is the disease that’s more likely to prove deadly and she’s really no more sick today than she was last week before she knew she had cancer.
But try telling her that.
She’s always been the most negative person on earth. And I’m not denying that when you get a diagnosis like that, you have a right to do a bit of complaining. Complain and bitch all you want, but damn… dont’ give up!
Her motto has suddenly become “There’s no point”, and you can hear the implied prefix, “I’ll be dead, so there’s no point”.
She went through cataract surgery on one eye recently. She’s supposed to get the other eye done, but now she wants to cancel the surgery because “there’s no point”.
I wish, right now, that I had 20/20 vision. And I don’t care if I have 3 months, 3 years or 30 years to live, I’d rather live with the good vision than without.
But she doesn’t even appreciate the good vision in the eye she’s already had done. Has she said one word about how nice it is to see? No… all she does is complain about all the eyedrops she has to put in her eyes.
She wants to send KK back to live with her mother. The reason: There’s no point in her staying here.
No point to anything.
When my dad was diagnosed with cancer, he was given 3 months to live. He lived many times that, and even worked up until 2 weeks before he died. He kept a good attitude and was a fighter. He was determined to make the best of his remaining time and spend it with the people he loved.
I’m trying to draw on that fire, but its hard to keep a positive attitude in this morgue.
Here’s another example of my mom’s negativity. It was several weeks ago, and she’d just put a decorative well in the front yard. A very pretty bird had come to perch on the top of the well and I pointed it out. “Hey, look at that pretty bird on your well”.
Her: (grumble grumble)… gonna shit all over it.
And that phrase sums up her entire attitude about life. There’s shit all over it.
I know that I can’t make her be optimistic, as much as I’d like to, but I want to maintain a positive attitude for her as well as for my own sanity. It won’t be easy, especially with the mental pause (and I had no idea that “feelings of impending doom” were a symptom of menopause. Hell… I’ve been going through menopause since I was five I guess), but I’m trying to get more immersed in the things that are meaningful to me. Writing, art, tarot, spirituality, liquor. And trying to keep a zen attitude about the worryish stuff.
And I just wanted to let y’all know whats going on.
Buy me a beer!
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Che, I hate that your mother has cancer. And I hate that she has lost all sense of fighting. And hate this for you too. Right on top of the menopause and all.
And I really wish that I could have met your dad.
I wish you could have met my dad too. You’d've liked him. He was really really… weird. Hey, I had to get it somewhere.
My friend Cheryl was once at the house, waiting for me to get ready to go out, and she was sitting in the living room with my dad. He was reading the paper and totally ignoring her, and she said she was kind of terrified at how quiet it was. After a while he lowered the paper, looked at her and asked, “Have you seen the bats?”.
She shook her head, and he lifted up the paper and started to read again. LOL. Scared the shit out of her.
Sorry to hear about your mom’s health, Che.
Sounds like your dad was a funny, bizarre, interesting guy. Cool! Great story about the bat comments.