Nan passed away around 2.10pm this afternoon surrounded by family.
Mum and I are keeping our shit together by being as practical as we can. Thankyou for everyone’s thoughts.
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Cancer
So this morning when Amy woke an hour earlier than normal, you could hear me exclaiming, ‘today is not going to be a good day’.
When the phone rang at 7.30am and it was Mum who had been called into the hospital with Nan at 4am, again I said ‘today is not going to be a good day’
When Mum rang again at 9am to tell me that the doctor thought that today would be Nan’s last day with us. Again, ‘today is not going to be a good day.’
A phone call to Nathan later ‘I need you; come home’ and I was in the shower with Amy, mind running 100 kph (much faster than my body was running I should add).
We got ready at the speed of light and we were ready to walk out of the door as Nathan got home. 40 minutes later, I’m sitting in a hospital room with her.
So.
Today is not a good day.
It’s been 12 months exactly since Nan was diagnosed with Lung Cancer.
Thoughts appreciated.
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Mum had to have Nan admitted to hospital on Saturday. [read post here]
Amy says ‘My Nanny is very sick’.
Nathan says ‘But your nan is my friend!’
And I say ‘This shit sucks’.
I don’t think she’s getting out of hospital. [And if she does happen to get out of hospital and gets better and reads this and growls at me and says ‘ner ner’ then it will be so worth it that I won’t care that she is growling at me.]
Today, for the third time, we will make the trek into The Hospital with two children in tow. We will walk Amy up and down the halls and let her play hide and seek in the Chapel. We will sit in the room and talk to Nan while I wonder how many more times we will do this. She is very very vague now and confused. We’re hoping that the medication they gave her to reduce the calcium levels in her blood will reduce the confusion by Friday.
I wonder, did we take too much for granted? Did we take her strength and her verve and her spice for life for granted? Even though we knew this cancer was terminal, did we not realise that once the true decline started, then everything was going to go to hell? I look at my Nan and don’t know if I can do this.
I’ve heard people say ‘a terminal illness gives you time to prepare, time to deal with it’. Hell, I’ve even said it myself. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to prepare for the kick in the guts feeling you get when you see your loved one tucked up into a bed, looking progressively smaller by the day.
So I say it again. This shit sucks.
****
I was 14 when I moved out of home. I left Mum and Dad’s house and headed down the hill to live with Nan. I let myself in after school most days (the days when I didn’t have soccer, or go to my boyfriends house), mucked around a bit with music and school work and then started cooking dinner for when Nan got home from work. Her spare room became my bedroom, with my stuff in it and my stuff on the walls. (No, not posters, it was mostly all my artwork from school)
Moving out was great. It gave me and my parents the space we needed from each other to have a good relationship. My childhood was far from horrible, but sometimes, things were very very strained. There was a lot of stress. We needed space from each other. I love my parents, but living with them was hard. We need space from each other in order to cope.
When I tell people ‘My grandmother is sick; dying even’ I don’t think they realise just how close we are. I love my mother, but Nan? She is like a second mother to me. Who on earth am I going to complain to when my mother is giving me the shits? My Nan is my go-to person when I am stressed. Unlike Mum, she is not likely to cackle at me (why YES, my mother does cackle. In a good way you understand) when Amy is driving me up the wall.
We are close and I’m not sure how I am going to cope with this. I’m as close to Nan as I am to Mum and I don’t know how to get through this.
So, this is not just my Nan tucked up in a hospital bed. This is my friend.
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I’ve been reading a few posts around the blogosphere that have been sponsored by the American Cancer Society, which is great. Raising awareness is a fantastic thing. Everyone needs to know about cancer. In fact, everybody probably knows someone who has had cancer, fought it and won.
I am however, taking objection to the request that the bloggers participating in this awareness campaign have been asked to keep it positive. It appears the ACS want people to hear the positive side of things, to show that people can beat it and that while it is a headfuck, it doesn’t always mean a life sentence.
Yada yada.
However.
Not everyone beats cancer. Sure we can all tell the happy side of things, talk about the cakes and the parties afterwards when you hear the magical words, ‘you’re in remission.’ In fact, I’ve been to a few of those parties, I’ve been thrilled to bits for people and breathed a sigh of relief. My best friend in primary school beat leukaemia when she was 10. My great-grandmother beat breast cancer in her 70’s. Nan beat thyroid cancer 10 years ago. Nathan’s father spent the first year of Amy’s life beating cancer. We’ve all got the positive feel good stories to tell. We can all say ‘this doesn’t have to be a death sentence, this doesn’t have to be IT.’ We push the bad memories so far down so that we can move on and forget how that chemo ward smelled, or how sick our loved ones truly looked in the moment.
But for some people, it is it. This is it. This is how they will spend their last few months, with cancer hanging over their heads and invading their bodies. A reminder with every twinge, that this time, you and your family fell on the wrong side of the odds and to be honest, it feels a little disrespectful of the ACS to ask people to try and be only positive when writing about their experiences with cancer. I wasn’t going to link to the blogger who posted about this. I didn’t want my anger to dilute her post. I am so pleased that they got their happy ending and their remission parties. Life was forever changed, but it was not halted. Not that time. I wouldn’t wish what we’re going through on anyone else.
Sometimes treatment doesn’t work. Sometimes there is no hope for forever, just hope for more time. We will be dealing with the after effects of cancer for a very long time. It’s not easy. I don’t think about tomorrow, or next month or how I’m going to cope. I don’t have a plan for how I’m going to hold it all together, but I know that I will because I have to. We’re the ones left behind. The ones no one wants to talk about because our story doesn’t fit into the message of hope they want to send.
At the end of this story, there will be no happy ending. There will be no cake, no parties, no congratulations. Our story will fade quietly into into the distance, leaving just us behind to pick up the pieces.
I have not had cancer. That does not mean I will not be a cancer survivor.
***
For anyone just joining us now, my Nan was diagnosed with Lung Cancer (NSCLC) almost 12 months ago. She’s never smoked a day in her life. Surgery wasn’t an option and radiation and chemotherapy, while buying us more time, didn’t cause the cancer to shrink or stop growing like we’d hoped it would. She’s having palliative radiation at the moment, in order to shrink some bone mets in her spine and lessen her pain.
I was going to close comments, but I think I’ll leave them open. Remember that Nan reads and she is more than happy to growl at you in the comments if you’re too morbid about her. She’s not gone yet. In fact, I expect a phone call tonight growling at me for writing this.
I want to know, how has cancer touched your family? Do you have a positive story to tell, or did everything go to hell in a hand basket. I want to hear, the good, the bad and the ugly. We’ve all got stories.
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Wakeful baby. Is wakeful.
It’s 11.35pm and I am awake with Isaac.
[Updated: it is now 12.09am and he has successfully nommed himself to sleep. Think of me as I move us both from the loungeroom to bed]
Now if I was more together, this post would be coupled with a photo, but cut me some slack. I just went to change Isaac’s nappy and I am so tired I forgot HOW to change him, half way through the change. In fact, I think I may have forgotten that I was changing him at all. I don’t quite remember now. I know that I eventually remembered what I was doing and his little bum is now all parceled back up.
And boobs! He wants BOOBS, RIGHT NOW plskthnx.
Couple this with the flailing and the om nom nomming and the wiggling and the snuffling and oh god did I mention the flailing?
He’s a good baby though, especially of a daytime when other people can see him. He naps like a champion – in my arms – my naked boob right in front of his mouth just in case he needs a little more. He is content for whole minutes at a time, so long as he is Up! And looking about! And being talked to! Less content if he is down in his bouncer at ankle level. I can only imagine that the fun things to look at do not reside at ankle level.
He doesn’t cry much either, but then he is only 3 weeks old and if I recall, it took Amy about 5 weeks to find her voice. Some days I wish she would lose it again.
And the best bit? He stays mostly asleep overnight, waking only to feed. He is however, the noisiest, fussiest sleeper I have ever seen. He snores, he fusses, he snuffles and growls. He also seems to need the tip of my little finger in his mouth all night.
I am still trying to work out what is better; a pink and wrinkled little finger that has been sucked on for hours, or a soggy nipple that has had the same thing happen to it.
Needless to say, I’m not exactly sleeping lately.
To be honest, it’s not exactly the easiest time to be dealing with constant breastfeeding and entirely sleepless nights (although, it does mean my blog name is good for a little while yet). Nan’s tumour has grown. Lots. And faster than we expected too. After the great news in November that it had shrunk so much, it’s now back and spreading.
Not content to do what most cancer does though, her cancer has spread to her heart. Not something we were expecting. If it had of spread, the liver ‘should’ have been it’s next port of call. Funnily enough, her liver is clear and healthy. Heh.
The crappiest bit though? Yeah, there isn’t anything left that they can do. Chemotherapy will just make her sicker – and the radiation that she had before isn’t an option anymore. (She developed Radiation Pneumonitis from the last lot, therefore, no more.)
It’s shit. Actually, it fucking sucks. It all fucking sucks.
The doctors are saying three to six months. Knowing Nan, we are counting on twelve. Still not enough. No where near enough.
It’s not meant to be like this.
***
Also, does anyone know how to get lanolin based nappy cream out of toddler hair? I have shampoo’d it once, but then Amy tipped the entire bottle of shampoo into the bath water and etc etc, so I didn’t get around to shampooing it a second time. She had a severe case of naughty today. Sigh.
Will try and shampoo it again in the morning.
***
Finally, remember that Nan reads my blog, so keep that in mind when you are commenting. She might just decide to growl at anyone that gets too morbid.
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