Showing posts with label tumors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tumors. Show all posts

Friday, April 04, 2008

Life Updates Part II

THIS WARRANT'S IT'S OWN POST!!!
(It's the little milestones that mean so much.)
My mom went for a mammogram yesterday morning and everything looked lovely. :) THIS IS WONDERFUL NEWS. One year ago, my mother went for a mammogram and then another and then a biopsy and then she was told she had breast cancer. Then she told me and then my world fell apart. My mother was only supposed to have part of her breast removed but that turned into a whole breast. Initial thought was that she wouldn't need chemotherapy because she was "Stage 0" or DCIS but that turned into too many cancer cells found in the surrounding lymph nodes and maybe we shouldn't do the breast reconstruction surgery until you talk to the oncologist. Six chemotherapy treatments, eight additional months of hormone therapy, six weeks of radiation that turned into eight because she had radiation burns that I had to get up at six in the morning to dress, pills (probably for the rest of her life), lymphoedema caused by the large amount of lymph nodes they had to remove along with her breast and the physical therapy sessions because there is no cure for it... ALL OF THE TIMES SHE COULDN'T SHOWER DRESS HERSELF OR PUT LOTION ON HERSELF, THE SURGICAL DRAIN THAT I HAD TO DRESS AND EMPTY AND TAKE INVENTORY ON TWO TO FOUR TIMES A DAY, ALL OF THE TEARS WE CRIED, ALL OF THE TIMES I WAS TERRIFIED, TO THE BOTTLES OF ALCOHOL I DOWNED, TO THE LOSS OF THE REST OF MY INNOCENCE, FIGHTS WITH FAMILY MEMBERS... Constipation from too many steroids and pain killers and the enema given to relieve it.... The hair loss, my tears, and the beauty of what's growing back... The toll all of this has taken on the life of the most beautiful woman I have ever known and the way I went from acting like I was 15 to being at least a semi-adult in a manner of weeks has all been worth it to hear her tell me there were not irregularities this time. I cry from the happiness that she seems to have made. :')


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Now playing: Something Corporate - Ben Franklin's Kite
via FoxyTunes

Life Updates Part I

I have not really been inspired to write lately. Well, that's kind of a lie because I have AT LEAST 5 danishes that I started in draft mode. This week has not been a good one for me. In case you didn't know, I've been sick (for what feels like, FOREVER) and it's cutting into my lifestyle. I thought I was going to get this nice gubment job and get paid nice gubment money but, sadly, no soy fluida en español so the job will likely go to some inmigrante o boricua instead (bitter much? YES!). I guess it's back to my other job prospects. I've got man problems! (Don't we all?) I won't dig too deep into that though. In conjunction with my illness, I am currently suffering from nature's cruelty to women and heavily medicating myself to cope with the pain involved with it.
Worst of all, my favoritest cousin in the whole widest world has ovarian cancer. This is where the tears start to flow as I write this. I forget how long she's had it because she waited AT LEAST a year to tell people but I found out sometime in the fall of 2007. First they told her 12-18 months, now they say no more than 6 months. I stand paralyzed and frozen at the thought of a life without her... The distance between Louisiana and Maryland is already too far. She has a daughter... A six year old daughter who is smart and beautiful and amazing and does not deserve this. My cousin does not deserve this. I do not deserve this. Excuse my selfishness, but why me? Sometimes, I look on my life and I wonder if I am a curse? There's more involved in why I say that but I won't get into that -- Things reveal themselves in time anyway. I just wish... That it were me instead of her. I don't live in RACIST ASS Hammond, LA and I don't have a daughter and I wouldn't have hesitated to let them rip my ovaries out with the initial diagnosis! I would have said fuck it, I've been begging for a hysterectomy for years anyway! Sometimes I'm mad at her and I don't think that's the right way to feel but what is the right way to feel? I'm just so hurt. I'm so tired. I'm tired of nothing ever going right and nothing ever being okay. I thought to myself yesterday, this is how people become alcoholics and drug addicts because being numb is better than hurting all the time... But I snap out of it. I wish I were religious because maybe then I would think to pray. I just want her to have a chance. I can do this cancer thing again if the results are the same... If, just like my mom, she comes out okay. I know this is not certain, because nothing is ever certain in life... Just like the doctor cannot hand my 24 year old cousin a death sentence because he/she does not know. Nobody knows. She's switched doctors, maybe the tests results will all come back that her tumors are benign and they just need to remove them. Maybe... Maybe... This is all a bad dream.

I don't know why I just wrote all of that.


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Now playing: Armor For Sleep - Raindrops
via FoxyTunes