Sucky Anniversary.

Friday, February 26, 2010

This weekend, 12 months ago, I discovered my Mum had breast cancer.

Tonight, I seem to be falling apart. Always surprises me. I ought to know better, grief has no rules, huh? All it takes is one little thing, can be totally unrelated, and the head is yanked from the sand and off it goes.

All these memories are swirling around my head and I can't seem to stop crying.

I remember her saying "I've got breast cancer" and my world felt as though it had shifted right off it's axis. My head literally spun and I felt like I was dreaming, life didn't feel real. I remember gulping to stop myself sobbing. I remember the look on my Dad's face. The fear. The sad. The fact that he could hardly speak. His voice cracked.

I remember 2 weeks later, her telling me how scared she was. Her tears. For the first time to me, she looked old and tired. And so vulnerable.

Getting drunk and high with my sister to escape.

Reading about the precautions post chemo, the extent that was needed to keep her and anyone else safe from the poison. Scared.

Her screaming when she set the kitchen on fire. The realisation at that moment that things were very wrong. She was not Mum as I knew her.

Her head in a turban. Bald.

Watching the chemo mix - bright red - travel up the line into her arm and wanting to rip it out, yet being so fucking grateful it was there.

Crying so much, needing mild sedation.

Feeling grateful that her odds were so good.

The relief at the end of her treatment cycle.

So much fear.



Thank god it is over. Thank god she was so lucky and caught it early. My heart aches for those who are not as lucky.

My heart hurts tonight. I need vodka.

7 comments:

Camarli said...

Much Love Kell. It is a horrible journey for any family member to have to experience. xxxx

The Joneses said...

Cancer is fucked.

But Kell sweet, your Mum is on the other side of it now and that is wonderful! Try not to dwell on the bad memories, instead relish every moment you and your Mum have together.

My mother went through chemo & radiation for lung & throat cancer, I wasn't there for her. I feel so much guilt for that, thankfully she was given alot of support by her family.

m.e (Cathie) said...

ohh, I had to stop by to say hello.
it does suck, definitely.
I also have an anniversary, 6mths grieving, unfortunately my dad was one of the unlucky ones.
my head & heart also hurt today but i'll stay away from the vodka!
{hugs} to you

JD said...

Oh Kell :(

I wish I had wise words for you tonight, the kind that made it all make sense, but I dont.

I'm sorry. I hope the vodka helps. Hope knowing that someone else, somewhere, feels a teensy bit of that pain for you, helps. xx

Louisa said...

(((hugs))) - Thank you for writing this. My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer about a week after I moved to the UK. A time I'd rather forget. She fought it well although it wasn't picked up as early as it could have been (no one's fault, just life). She built her treatment around a planned trip to visit me and braved on through some very aggressive chemo. Not nice to see what effects it had but for her it worked.

Mark said...

Your mom healed herself. Congratulations for her.

Chemo only interfered with it. There's very little scientific evidence chemotherapy is therapy. It's an expensive and lucrative medical doctor drug cult shoved at the emotionally vulnerable.

There are many options:

http://commodityecology.blogspot.com/2007/06/7-drugsmedicines.html

Ask yourself why most medical doctors, if they had cancer, would never take chemotherapy.

Mark said...

No I don't troll for blogs to leave malicious comments, like yours sadly. I was interested in your use of the term natsukashii.

Plus, I'm not commenting on your blog because you will delete it.

Therefore hopefully you will see this as a selfless waste of my time. Hopefully for a good cause.

So this becomes a personal comment to you and your misplaced causality about what happened with your Mom's medical treatment.

It was a helpful comment. Why?

Because most people who get cancer get it again, and it's good to know your options.

Don't mistake your Mom's resilience for help from organized medicine:

"Furthermore, it narrates:

"The AMA targeted Harry Hoxsey as public quack #1. But by the 1940s, its quack files had swelled to include 300,000 names. Hoxsey had long charged a conspiracy. His solitary voice was now echoed by many others. In the 1950s, a Congressional committee came to the same conclusion. The Fitzgerald Report to Congress named at least a dozen other promising cancer treatments seemingly blocked by organized medicine. Their proponents were mostly doctors of high reputation. The treatments were immunological or nutritional. Dismissing them as quackery, were panels of surgeons or radiation therapists. The congressional report emphasized two outstanding cases of alleged suppression: Harry Hoxsey and Dr. Andrew C. Ivy. If Hoxsey fit the [stereotypical] image of a quack [without being one], Dr. Ivy certainly did not. [He was the organizer of the Bethesda Navel Medical Research Institute, former national director of the National Cancer Advisory Council, Vice President of the University of Illinois, and a former board member of the American Cancer Society; he was associating himself with the drug Krebiozen (more information available from the book Krebiozen: 13 Years of Confict (1963)).

The Hoxsey film documents a disturbing pattern at least three times: where the AMA doctors attempted to buy a workable cancer treatment, though were refused by the inventors. Then the AMA sets out to destroy through its political institutional allies the alternative it was unable to profit from, though attempted to. There were Congressional investigations into AMA fraud in 1953, 1963, and 1981 the film documents as well."

You're trusting the wrong people, and insulting someone interested in helping.

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