Posts tagged as:

cancer

40 days later.

by Myg on April 27, 2010

So, I thought I should probably go on ahead and post something before I get one of those friendly Blogher ad network emails that say, “Hey, Loser! We like totally understand if you’re too much of a lightweight to post consistently, but if you don’t get some shit up there in a hurry, we’re going to yank your ads for a spell.” Actually, they are a bit more understanding than that, and sure, who wants their ads running on a blog with a stale post at the fore? Nobody, that’s who. And even though I am a teeny, tiny blog, I did earn enough money from Blogher to at least pay my hosting cost for the year, so I’m not ungrateful.

I am sort of depressed, though. I’m not even being sarcastic. Well, depressed might not exactly be the right word. Which is why I’ve modified it with “sort of.” But it just sucks. And yeah, I know, I am still grieving the death of my beautiful young step-sister (and can I just please say this: when I say “step” please don’t think that I say that because she was somehow less sister-like.  I’m just a stickler for accuracy in these things.) Grief feels like depression, though it is not the same thing. It actually sucks a lot less, other than the fact that it means somebody or something of importance has died.

I’m not sleeping great, I’m distracted, I’m not doing things that need to get done, I’m not really here when I’m here, sometimes just bursting out into tears for no goddamn reason until I realize, oh yeah, she’s just fucking gone. Gone. Gone for good.

I absolutely hate the absolutes of life.

Fuck certainty and give me the unknowns. Give me the possibilities. I will take them all in exchange for that one inevitability.

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Not enough, too late

by Myg on March 18, 2010

Hey you.

The last time I saw you was two days ago. March 16th. Two days after my birthday. By the way, you didn’t send me a card this year. First time in like, ever. Unlike me, who never remembers to send you or anyone a fucking birthday card. You had an excuse. I never do. In the future, I’m going to send out god damned birthday cards, anniversary cards, Easter cards, Secretary’s day cards. I am going to try to be more thoughtful, like you. But I’m telling you now, I will never come close. But I will try.

You died this morning. If I’d known you were going to slip out like that, I would have been there last night with you. I’m sorry for that. I was planning to come this morning and then Dad called. I was too late. You went so, so fast once they told you how sick you really were. You weren’t ready, I know. I am so incredibly sorry for that. I wasn’t ready either, not that that fucking matters one bit.

I want you to know I’m writing this to you because part of me believes you can still see it. I am trying to nurture that part of me, but I admit it isn’t easy. The older I get, the harder it is. If you can give me any kind of sign, that’d be great. I will try to be open for it. But I’m sure if you still exist in some form where you can actually read this, you’ve got better things to do. Like not be sick for the first time in six and a half years. Like watch out for that little girl of yours here.

I know leaving her was the worst part for you. I know it was. I want to puke every time I imagine that hell for you. So badly I wanted to tell you, she’s going to be all right. She will never forget you, I promise. She is going to make it through this. Kids have a way. They are fucking magic. They can endure and they go on, even when we can’t. I will do whatever I can to ensure that she does. This I promise. But I couldn’t tell you, because we didn’t ever talk about you dying. Not even two days ago when we knew it was coming. This is probably my biggest regret right now, believe it or not, that you were dying and we didn’t talk about it. I thought it was because that’s what you wanted. I will never know.

The last time I saw you, you were propped up on pillows in bed. I told you I had a cold and I didn’t want to breathe on you. How fucking stupid that seems now. I should have bear hugged you. I didn’t know I wouldn’t get another chance. I didn’t want to make you sicker. I didn’t want to hurt you. The last thing I did for you was swab a little vaseline in your nose where that fucking oxygen tubing was irritating you. My last big sisterly act. Pretty fucking lame, if you ask me. But I’m going to hold onto that moment forever. The last thing I ever did for you, however lame it was. It wasn’t enough. I’m sorry.

I asked you, “Do you want to talk about anything?”

You looked at me with the blankest of expressions. For a minute I didn’t know if you understood the question. Then you quietly said,

“No.”

“Do you want anything?” I asked.

“No.”

“Do you want company?” Pause.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to see anyone in particular?”

Blank stare.

This was the sum total of our last conversation. Downstairs, out of your earshot, the hospice nurse told us, “She’s slipping fast. By this time next week she’ll probably be in a coma. Now’s the time for people to come say their goodbyes.”

But how could I say goodbye? I couldn’t do it. I thought I’d have another chance. I thought by next week it would be too late, not by this morning. I was fucking wrong, wasn’t I?

I remember when we used to talk about the cancer. Back when you were scared but there were still options. Things that could be done. Back when you had a fighting chance. Oh my God, did you fight. So hard you fought. With everything you had. They gave you so much chemotherapy they wiped out your kidneys for good. “Sorry, we can’t give you any more, ever again, or it will kill you.” Fucking hell. Then you got leukemia. Jesus. But you beat it! I remember how we talked then, how you fought the big, tough, scary questions. I remember holding your hand, crying with you. But then a corner was turned. The terminal corner. And you didn’t want to talk about it anymore. And I tried to respect that. I tried to understand that you just didn’t want to think about something you could do nothing about. So I didn’t say anything about it, about the inevitable, about this shit right here, ever again.

I don’t know if that was the right thing to do or not, but I want you to know, I would have cried with you, I would have been afraid but I would have stayed by your side and faced it down with you if I thought that’s what you wanted. But that’s not what happened. And I am sorry if you wanted that but couldn’t ask. I’m sorry if I should have known to just bring it up and didn’t. I will never know.

Look, I have a lot more to tell you. This isn’t even the most important thing, but it’s the thing that’s consuming me ever since this morning. This deal of not saying, not doing enough for you to help you have a better death. You had a terrible death, I know. You will not ever know how incredibly sorry I am for that. How much I wish I could have done something, anything besides slip a little petroleum jelly up your nose, to make the end of your life less agonizing than it was. I am sure now that your suffering in the end is going to haunt me much longer than your death.

Kid, someday I will tell you how much I am going to miss you, how much you mean to me, how much I appreciate all that you were, all that you’ve done to make my world a better place, but at that point I will have to be ready to say goodbye, and I’m sorry but I’m still not there. I know. I’m late, as usual.

I’m sorry.

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by Myg on March 17, 2010

Know what I want to do? I want to run up there, into the nursery where they are sleeping so soundly, so quietly, and I want to take them someplace that isn’t real. Somewhere where nothing bad can ever happen. Where we have some control over the outcome. Someplace deep in the heart of my imagination where we all live forever and we never get sick and we never die. I want to inhale my children like air, over and over and over and exhale them out over the world where they can be everywhere, anywhere all at once. I want to be with them forever. I want to sustain some sort of belief that that can happen. I want to knock this terror right on its ass, stare it down and tell it to fuck off. It can’t have me. It can’t have them. It can’t have you. None of us are leaving. Ever.

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Shower

by Myg on November 11, 2008

Let me begin this way:

I am an ass.

Now, some history.

If you’ve read much of this blog before, then you may already know that I had IVF in order to get pregnant, and maybe you know that’s because I have blocked fallopian tubes after an ectopic pregnancy (naturally conceived) I had last year. You might even know that I’ve been trying to get pregnant since January 2005.

And you may recall me saying that infertility sucks balls.  Before infertility, I was the kind of person who’d look at someone undergoing treatment like IVF and say, “there are so many kids already born who need homes – why would anyone go through IVF?” Oh yes, I did say that. And I meant it, working with a lot of homeless kids in shelters at the time. I mentally stab myself in the leg with a fork for that now.

So. For the past 3+ years I have been as avoidant of any baby-related social event as I could be. I was extra specially hyper avoidant of the dreaded friend/extended family member’s baby shower. Just. Couldn’t. Do. It.

Because I have an ego, early in my pregnancy I’d made an announcement to those I thought needed to hear it – no baby shower! I did not want to ask my family and friends to participate in an event I had willfully (maybe even spitefully) ignored for the last 3+ years of my life. I just couldn’t face those people or look at how poorly I’d handled my feelings over being infertile in the social context. So more avoidance had been my plan.

How was I going to get the hundreds, or perhaps thousands of dollars worth of gear I was going to need? Hell, I thought these babies would be more like puppies. A cardboard box and some sheets would do, right? They don’t do anything but eat and sleep for awhile – how much could they possibly need? (Hey, I might be 39 years old but what did do I know about babies?)

Six weeks ago or so, someone let it slip that a surprise shower was in the works. I won’t say who. Actually, no less than five someones let it slip. I was told out of kindness, so I would be able to either stop it or prepare myself for it. When I found out, I cried. I was angry, frustrated, a little humiliated and damn it, here was another thing about this pregnancy that felt out of control.

Then I mentally slapped myself. Because I suddenly understood clearly that this baby shower wasn’t about me, and this was something I was going to have to get used to if I was going to be a Mom.

See, the masterminds of the dreaded affair were my stepmother and her daughter, my stepsister, “A”.  A  has been battling cancer for almost five years.  She’s been recovering most recently from lung surgery ever since April.  She is still on oxygen and has dialysis three days a week (from the damage previous cancer treatment has done to her kidneys).

There is nothing – nothing – like a loved one’s cancer to make you understand what is and what is not a big deal in life. My ego? SO not a big deal. Even though I couldn’t see that at first, my stepmom could. And she understood that my babies needed stuff, and that I was going to need help no matter how reluctant I am to admit it or accept it.

While my stepmom was booking the restaurant and paying the bills, A was in charge of all the details – from the invitations to the decorations to the shower games.  She put that shower at the center of her free time for over a month, painting custom made centerpieces and hand rolling adorable little favors between dialysis and schlepping into the city for experimental chemo treatment. “I loved doing it,” she said. I know she did, too.

If that realization wasn’t humbling enough, all of my extended family came out. All of them – even those whose RSVPs I never returned when they had showers of their own, to whom I’d never bothered to send a card or gift of acknowledgment of any kind when their own kids were born. They were all there and they outfitted my two kids better than NASA equips the shuttle.

I told you I am an ass. Did you think I was kidding?

To top it all off, would you believe that it was A’s best day since her surgery in April? She didn’t use her oxygen for most of the event, despite the fact that she was running around, handling gifts and guests and wait staff.  I haven’t seen her with that kind of energy since before her operation.

When I stood up to thank everyone, I cried.  I’ve done my share of crying over the last few years, but somehow these pregnancy tears are different. Yeah, I still get those snot filled migraine styled headaches when it goes on for too long. But I’m not in mental anquish when the tears come.

I think I’m just experiencing the literal awesomeness of what the whole thing means.

You know, the life cycle and the continuation of our very existence. The way love in a family can transcend any one member’s social transgressions and promote the healing of a bitter past and maybe thensome.  

That kind of thing.

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Gross armpit lump story. Mmmm…did that get your attention?

by Ms. Myg on October 6, 2008

Week 18 – which I haven’t posted yet (I’m working on it!) had one full day of “Oh My God I’m Gonna Die” agony.  It had to do with that gross extra breast tissue under my arm (which I go on about in Week 17.) I actually went to my doctor’s office and saw the nurse practitioner (NP) for it. This was the second time I had this armpit evaluated. The first was back in April before I was pregnant, because it was swollen and it hurt. My previous OB/GYN announced it was nothing to worry about, and then he proceeded to not worry about it. No follow up. Fucker. Another reason I’m glad I changed docs.

This lump under my right arm sometimes swells up and really, really hurts. It used to happen during my period, and there was a smaller, harder more painful lump inside. Since getting pregnant, it has been fairly consistently swollen, and now there are two smaller, harder lumps in there which last week after examination, the NP stated were palpable nodes. Lymph nodes. I was referred that day for an ultrasound on my armpit to take a look. (As an aside, I must note that when I used the medical term for armpit (axillary) with the scheduling person at the Radiology department she asked, “What’s that?” How confidence inspiring, really.)

“If there’s an issue with the lymph nodes we’ll follow it. If they get worse, they may have to come out, though I’m not expecting that.”

Right.

Like a lot of people, I have a whole ton of cancer in my family so talk of swollen lymph nodes without any obvious infection symptoms made me go pale. Tell me not to worry all you want. It just. doesn’t. matter.

I had the ultrasound and the tech said, “Okay, place your finger exactly on the spot where you think there’s a lymph node.” I found the spot – it’s the most painful place on my body, so not terribly hard to miss. She put the machine over it. “I see nothing – no nodes.” We looked all over that engorged lump of fatty tissue and still, no lymph nodes.

“What is it then?” I asked.

“I have no idea” she said. Comforting, right?

Apparently there was no difference between the larger lump of fleshy tissue and the harder smaller lumps inside of it, according to the ultrasound. It was all the same gross stuff.  The tech left the room and showed it to the doctor, and he said “I dunno either.” She said it doesn’t look like breast tissue either – just some other fatty tissue.

“It doesn’t look bad,” she said. “You look upset! Don’t be upset! There’s nothing scary we’re seeing here. Just tissue.”

Okay, great. That’s easy for someone to say who has one iota of medical or biological know-how. I do not. Strange fatty tissue masses appearing randomly in my body do not make me happy.

I’m glad nobody is worried, sure. But I have to ask – why don’t the doctors want to find out what it is? Our medical system is mind boggling with its inexplicably bad communication with patients. If you had random fatty lumps growing in your body, even if they were not cancerous nor in any way dangerous, would you not have the curiosity to find out how the hell they got there?

I had a massage a few weeks ago and the massage therapist felt those two little hard lumps and said, “you have a couple of serious knots in here that are causing you this shoulder pain.” I let her work on them (and it hurt so fucking bad I can’t even describe it), and my nagging persistent shoulder pain did indeed decrease. But not the armpit pain.

So when the Nurse Practitioner announced they were nodes, I wasn’t happy. All kinds of things went through my mind.

I really wish I’d had the wherewithall to ask a ton of questions but I was so anxious my mind was blank. “What could this mean? What are the possible causes of this? How likely are they? What are some common reasons this could happen?” Etc, etc, etc. I didn’t ask any of those, and I take responsibility for that. But the nurse said virtually nothing other than, “Go get it looked at.”

So in the hours before I could get the ultrasound I combed the internet. Mistake! Why? Cancer, cancer, cancer. That’s why. Try googling “swollen lymph node” and “axillary” or “armpit” and see what you get. Lymphoma, breast cancer, Leukemia. These are not the things you should be reading about at 18 weeks pregnant if you don’t absolutely need to. Especially if you are like me, and in your immdediate family there’s one person who’s had breast cancer before age 40 and another who had Leukemia before age 30.

When I’m anxious I NEED information. Need it. But without doubt it would have been better to get real information from a real medical professional, instead of from the internet. Probably better to call the doctor back and ask the questions. Maybe next time I’ll be smart and do that.

Today I’m not worried. The lump has ceased to be painful for now, and what testing I’ve had doesn’t indicate any reason to worry. I know that elevated levels of stress are not good for the little guys inside and I’ve nothing to hang my worry on anyway.

A mammogram would totally rule out any scary cancer related stuff here, but obviously I can’t get that now. I had a baseline done when I was 37 because as I said, I have a lot of cancer in my family. It was perfectly normal. My breast exam last week was perfectly normal too.

When it’s all said and done I’ll get another mammogram anyway, given that some studies have shown an increased risk of breast cancer among women undergoing IVF treatment. But I’m not going to worry about it. No, really.

I’ve got maybe 19 weeks to go now before the little ones are here, and it seems if I’d like to worry, there are a great many other worries to choose from.

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