A Life Worthy

Tag: cancer

  • Waiting Room

    Last week my mother-in-law went in for a CAT scan to find out if months of chemotherapy and radiation did the trick.

     

    clockI want to do this.

    I don’t want to do this.

    The parking lot is full—can we go home?

    The waiting room is full—perhaps they won’t have time for me today.

    Maybe the machine will break…maybe the lab tech will get violently ill from eating bad sushi and they’ll have to reschedule.

    I want to know.

    I don’t want to know.

    I need to know.

    When will I know?

    I sort through magazines, looking for something

    to divert

    to distract

    to entertain

    as if anything could possibly hold my attention

    except…it.

    I’m surrounded by people.

    I’m all alone.

    Other people

    not people

    other patients

    each wrapped in a cocoon

    of symptoms

    of sickness

    of hope

    of fear

    What will they find with their

    looking

    and scanning

    and probing?

    If it’s gone, do I get my life back?

    If it’s not, do I have the strength

    to fight

    again?

    Everyone sympathizes.

    No one understands.

    and I am so cold

    God, you have never seemed so close.

    Or so far away.

  • Taste and See

    I really like eating.cake

    The whole experience.  Anticipating that first bite of yummiosity.  The way my mouth waters as I smell the food.  The burst of taste on my tongue.  Delicious, slow chewing.  The swallow.  The sigh.  The occasional discreet belch.

    I mentioned a few weeks ago that my Mother-in-Law has cancer.  The tumor is in her throat, and treatment combines chemotherapy with radiation targeted at her neck.  This combination of radiation and chemotherapy have made it increasingly difficult to eat.  For those of you who are unaware—as I, blissfully, was until a month ago—radiation and chemo attack your ability to eat in a nefarious variety of ways.   (more…)

  • Squeaky Wheel

    squeaky wheelMy mother-in-law has cancer.

    Sorry to start off with such a downer, but there it is.  It’s pertinent to the rest of this story, so you kinda need to know.  And now you do.

    Anyway, she was diagnosed about two months ago, and underwent a series of tests to determine the scope of the problem and the best course of treatment.  The doctors, concluding that surgery was not a viable option, introduced her to the mind-numbing world of radiation and chemotherapy.  In essence, their plan is to bombard her person with all the radiation and unpronounceable chemicals that normal people struggle to avoid.  They intend to cure her by making her body such a toxic environment that no self-respecting mutation would want to live there. (more…)