by Band Back Together | Nov 12, 2010 | Cancer and Neoplasia, Coping With Cancer, Sadness |
I got the call last night. It’s Stage 4 cancer this time. It’s “everywhere.” I don’t know what to do. I’m half a continent away from them.
On one hand, it’s not right to mourn. He’s not out yet, and they’re beginning chemo again next week. But really, it doesn’t look good. The chemo is just to “slow it down.” And I’m a realist. And so I mourn, if only inside.
This is the uncle that is quietly awesome. He’s in the background, making sure everyone is okay. He’s brilliant, and made sure his 3 kids all went wherever they wanted for college (we’re talking Ivy League Schools), despite living on a teacher’s salary. He’s the rock. When I drove through town on a whim, getting in late, he made sure a bed was made, dinner was left out, and then took me out for a hockey game the next day.
And he’s too young to go.
I guess I don’t really have a question. I just need to type this out, and make it somewhat public. Thanks.
by Band Back Together | Nov 5, 2010 | Adoption, Breast Cancer, Coping With Losing A Partner, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Partner/Spouse Loss |
The day Tom died, I lost more than a husband. I lost a family. From the moment I turned on CNN, the family I loved, enjoyed and belonged to began to fracture, as if the second the plane crashed, it became more than tortured steel and shredded rubber.
Tom was from a large, German, Catholic family, where he was the baby of seven. There was quite an age difference between the oldest and the youngest. I’ve always believed Tom was the favorite, the golden child, because he was most like his father and was the last child his mother could ever have.
He loved his family, but they exasperated him. He was closest to his father and endured his mother. He once told me he loved his mother, but he didn’t like her. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when they turned on me. There were signs over the years that I didn’t measure up. When we got engaged at graduation, she was planning a celebratory family dinner. I wasn’t invited, until she found out we were engaged, and then she felt obligated.
Tom’s first job took us to Fargo, ND. There was never any question I wasn’t going, although the wedding was 10 months away. The night before the moving van came, we moved my boxes to his house. As my boxes sat in their living room, his mother told Tom if I intended to live together, and then have a large “white” wedding not to bother sending invitations to the family, because none of them would come. Tom stood up against her and she finally backed down. She never apologized to me.
Years later, his family was incredibly supportive when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. They flew in for my surgery and sat by my bed. Seven months later when I ran the NYC marathon, they were wearing sweatshirts with words of encouragement.
But, when we announced we were adopting, his mother wasn’t happy. The rest of the family was ecstatic. Weeks before Tom’s death, one of his brothers call to try and convince him not to adopt, but hire a surrogate instead. I was the problem after all, and with a surrogate, the family genes would be passed on. Tom hung up the phone in anger. It was the last time he ever spoke to his brother.
If these memories of the past didn’t raise a red flag, how they treated me during the funeral should have woke me up. Tom’s memorial service was held in the church we were married. His family wanted to memorialize the child Tom was. I wanted to celebrate the man he became. They wanted to have the Stations of the Cross; I wanted to toast him with Scotch and cigars.
It didn’t stop there. His brother insinuated himself into the investigation of the crash, claiming I was overcome with grief and he was acting on behalf of the entire family. He was notified of official information before me, such as the recovery of Tom’s remains. When he knew about the recovery of Tom’s wedding ring before me, the shit hit the fan. My attorneys took on the Nova Scotia government and I tackled the US State Department. But, as soon as all of his remains were identified, I closed the door on his meddling family. They wanted Tom’s remain repatriated and buried in their small town cemetery, I intended to have him cremated and his ashes scattered over the crash site. They tried to manipulate me by playing the church card, but I stood firm.
The day I scattered his ashes, his family was absent. They didn’t know. They would have turned it into a three-ring circus, but I made it about Tom. I informed his father in a very difficultly written, heartfelt letter. His family never forgave me for that, but if I had to do it all over again, I would change nothing.
An uncertain truce was called after I adopted Elliott. Although they attended her christening and showered her with gifts, they were sharpening their knives. I sued the airline after Tom’s death. I was the only person who had the legal right, but they effectively counter sued me. They seemed to have forgotten at the moment we said, “I do” all rights shifted to me. They claimed our marriage wasn’t solid, Tom wasn’t Elliott’s father, and they disclaimed Elliott as family, and claimed breast cancer wasn’t an excuse not to have children.
By the end, his mother said Tom married beneath him, it was my fault we didn’t live near home, and if I read between the lines, she wished it were me on the plane rather than Tom. One of the very low points during this difficult time came when a brother told me “they” had decided it was harder to lose a son than a husband.
My attorneys tried to protect me from the worst, but the damage was done. I became so paranoid I feared they would have me followed by a private investigator. By this time I had met Colby and I wanted to move on with my life. The amount of fear and anger this family was causing me was overwhelming. The hardest part of it all was I thought they loved me, I thought they cared, but to discover how they felt about me rocked me to the core.
Four years after Tom’s death, we were summoned to federal court in Philadelphia. The judge clearly took my side, but he went through the meditative process. In the end, an agreement was reached. The lawsuit was settled and I could move on. I exchanged “pleasantries” with his parents on leaving the courtroom. His mother was not warm and welcoming, his father was in pain. He hugged me a long time and I could feel how much he missed his son. He asked after Elliott and I gave him a picture. It was the last time I ever saw them.
I remember getting in a cab bound for the airport when I turned to my parents with tears streaming down my faces and said, “I can finally marry Colby.”
I lost more than a husband the night Tom died. I lost a family I loved, a family I enjoyed, and family I felt I belonged to.
How naïve I was…
by Band Back Together | Oct 29, 2010 | Brain Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Chronic Pediatric Illness, Coping With Cancer, Fear |
*Of course, no one can fight cancer alone. Or should. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t sometimes feel alone. Even if you aren’t the one who has the cancer.
I still remember walking with my son on his way to the OR. Trying not to fall to pieces. Wanting to believe that the neurosurgeon I had hardly met more than 24 hours before would fix my son. That his hands would be steady as he worked to remove the tumor that was slowly taking over my son’s brain. That the tumor really was “just” benign as he had thought.
Oh, how I wanted someone to promise me that my son would be okay.
The constant plea in my head… just please let my son be okay. Just please let him live.
Oh, dear God… my son was going to have brain surgery. My two-year old son. Brain surgery.
Then the bright white room, people moving about as if on a mission, my eyes locked onto my son.
“Time out!”
Me wondering, “What the hell?” and “What did we do wrong?” Only to realize that they are trying to verify that they have the correct patient and the correct procedure. I try to regain what little composure I have left. I can’t lose it completely in front of my son.
Then the anesthesiologist telling me to kiss my son as it’s time for me to go.
My son is howling as if betrayed. “How dare you leave me with these people?” scream his eyes. Then the medicine starts to take an effect and the life seems to fade from those same eyes as his body goes limp.
I walk out of the OR. Without my son.
I had never been more terrified in my life.
That was four years ago.
In the last few days, I’ve been teaching that son to Rollerblade. The one who before the diagnosis had problems with balance and motor skills. Now on rollerblades.
It’s one of the most beautiful things ever.
But he didn’t make it to this point alone. Nor did I.
Nearly a year after our son’s surgery, my husband learned of a program called Hero Beads offered by a local childhood cancer support group called Capital Candlelighters (soon to be renamed Badger Cancer Support Network). This string of beads documents the diagnoses, treatments, milestones, etc. along a child’s journey.
It’s almost indescribable seeing your child’s medical history as a string of beads. And regardless of outcome, there are always too many beads.
And while I treasure those beads, Capital Candlelighters offers kids and their families so many more concrete means of support. From financial aid to support groups to sharing information… anything that they can do to make the hell that is childhood cancer easier for children and their families.
Over time my family has begun to participate in events either sponsored by or to benefit Capital Candlelighters. We recently walked in our second Suzy’s Run. It’s a highly emotional experience. Seeing the families and kids who are still fighting or have beaten cancer. Seeing the families whose kids have lost.
So it’s time for me to do more, to give back. Because doing good feels good. But I’m not done yet.
“…because kids can’t fight cancer alone!” (Capital Candlelighters motto)
(I’ll be damned if I don’t tear up every time I read that motto.)
by Band Back Together | Oct 24, 2010 | Anger, Breast Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Coping With Cancer, Fear, Feelings, Sadness |
Yesterday afternoon, shortly before 12:30pm, I nursed my sweet baby girl for what I can only pray was not the last time.
I sobbed silently, my tears dripping onto her curls while a swarm of my closest friends and family buzzed around the kitchen. I was losing my religion in the living room and the day was only halfway over.
My mother is back and stayed with Nugget while Nugget’s Daddy worked from home. Barbara and Martha took me to chemo. Despite having loaded up on Ativan, I cried most of the way there.
I wore a top that would provide easy access to my port, which had been slathered with theemla cream and covered in saran wrap for at least an hour.
Patients are only allowed to have one guest accompany them to the treatment room. I had two, who would not take “just one” for an answer. Marla, my oncology nurse, happily pulled up another chair to accommodate my posse.
Then a senior patient, as all the other patients seem to be, swung the treatment room door open and announced, “Well! All the good chairs have been taken.” I wondered if I’d gotten one of the good ones. I hoped so!
Marla drew the curtain so she could access my port. I told Barb and Martha that they would be watching, because I couldn’t really get a good look at the action and wanted to be sure my friends suffered along if there was indeed any suffering to be done. There was not. I think it was worse for them. Then the two of them chatted about how they’d like to be nurses except for, well, all of the gross stuff. Cute scrubs had been really, really appealing, but simply couldn’t trump dealing with blood and needles.
The dynamic duo was relentless in their efforts to keep me entertained. As I was showing them my phone that Nugget had rendered the antenna unretractable on, Martha cracked, “Your phone has an antenna?” I replied with a smart, “Shut your trap!” which sent senior patient #2, coughy McHacksalot, into a rage of laughter and then into a, well, fit of coughing and hacking. Note to self – keep wiseass cracks down to a dull roar in the treatment room or suffer the wrath of coughy McHacksalot.
Treatment went fairly well. I had no reaction to the test dose of Bleomycin. I took the extra dose of Ativan she offered. (duh!) At one point I was having some pain, almost like a burning sensation when I took a deep breath. so Marla switched my iv bags and checked my lungs. Whatever it was, it subsided and I finished Day 1 of treatment with no real issues.
by Band Back Together | Oct 18, 2010 | Breast Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Grandparent Loss, Grief, Hospice, Loss, Sadness, Stroke |
Cancer sucks. My grandma, barely sixty years old, died from breast cancer when I was four. Even though I was so young, I still remember watching her suffer. I remember watching my mother and her sister suffer, too. Even though I was young, I still remember thinking if there was really a God, why would he put my grandma through all of this?
She never hurt a soul…and I loved her.
Cancer claimed my mother-in-law, too. I loved her as though she were my blood. Maybe even more than that because she never said a harsh word to me, or as far as I know, about me.
She had lung cancer and yes, she smoked. “I shot myself in the foot,” she said to me when she was diagnosed. She fought like the feisty Scottish lady that she was. She was diagnosed around Thanksgiving and lost her battle that following June.
Just about six months. DAMN! It was so quick! I know it didn’t seem so quick to her.
She went through chemotherapy and all of the horrible shit that went along with it. She did everything she was supposed to do. She did everything right. And then they found cancer in her brain. The woman never took a fucking pill in her life and here she was having fucking brain surgery! She made it through the surgery. My sister-in-law and I went into the recovery room and damn it if that lady wasn’t sitting up and talking right after having her skull busted open.
While she was in rehab, she had a stroke. It was a kind I had never heard of. It was progressive so it started out slowly. She knew what was going on.
Chef and I went to visit her in the hospital and at that point she said she had had enough. She said to us, “if they find any more cancer, I don’t want to be treated.” If she had known that she only had six months to live, she would have said, “Screw chemo,” and gone to visit her grandchildren in Wisconsin.
I know that because she was an open book. She had no secrets. What you saw was what you got.
The next day she could not speak.
We were the last of her children to carry on a conversation with her. When the doctors finally determined that she had had a stroke and that it was progressive, my sister-in-law decided to bring her back home. The doctors said she had less than a week to live, so she would come home to be surrounded by her children, grandchildren and her beautiful antiques.
My husband and his sisters took care of her for that week. Because my children were so young, I stayed home and came for the weekend. My two year old daughter stood by my mother-in-law’s bed and spoke to her. She called her “gammy.” My mother-in-law would grunt occasionally. Sure enough on day seven – just a week after we had our last conversation with her – my mother-in-law lost her battle.
I ask the question once again, forty years later… if there was really a God, why would he put my mother-in-law through all of this?
She never hurt a soul…and I loved her.
by Band Back Together | Oct 15, 2010 | Cancer and Neoplasia, Grief, Loss, Parent Loss |
Cancer might not have destroyed my childhood, but I sure grew up faster. I knew from the time that I was six that my dad was going to die. My family never hid Daddy’s sickness. Even though my parents were divorced and my dad went on to remarry when I was seven, we were always very close. I have great memories of my dad and he will forever be the one I compare all men to.
Nobody will ever be better than my own dad.
My dad was diagnosed with cancer when he was sixteen. It started in his jaw and he went through countless surgeries, had many teeth removed, radiation and chemo (all beginning in 1966 when cancer was very hush-hush and nobody talked about it).
Eventually my dad wound up having half his jaw removed. The cancer showed up again, this time in his lungs. Over the years my dad underwent countless surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy treatments.
My dad didn’t have “Lung Cancer” and to be honest, I don’t know what he had, but he would get tumors that would grow in the pulmonary artery. Chemo would shrink it, but the bitch kept coming back. My dad never quit smoking though, and he made me promise I would never pick the habit up (which I have stood by and have made my own kid promise to never smoke either).
According to my aunt, my family believes that my dad got the cancer after cleaning up some land for some extra money. Years later, that land was found to be a toxic waste site. To this day there are efforts to clean up that land to make it profitable for the city where my dad grew up.
My dad worked hard even though he wasn’t supposed to do physical labor and when he would get sick he would be down for days, sometimes weeks. That didn’t stop him from moving back to NY when I was ten and buying a house on three acres in upstate NY, building a barn and putting up fence so he could have his own little farm. Nope. Nobody stopped my daddy. I’m fairly certain that if his doctors had known what he was up to, they would have committed him. My dad became a farmer when he was thirty-six. He raised cows, pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, a horse named Rusty, and had an enormous vegetable garden.
I remember going with him to a chemo treatment when I was eleven or twelve. His chemo treatments were done seventy miles away in Cooperstown at the hospital there, so my dad, the trooper, made a day of it like it was just another day in his life. He had his chemo and then we walked around Cooperstown and then drove the seventy miles back home. Just another day.
I remember the last summer I spent with my dad. My stepmom took the kids to the store or something and my dad was watching TV. He called me into the living room and wanted me to sit with him. He looked at me and told me he was dying. It broke my heart. In my heart I had always known Daddy was sick but I will always remember that day. We sat there crying together. It was very emotional.
My dad died on February 25, 1991. He was forty-one.
I was fourteen.
Daddy died of pneumonia in the hospital. I had spoken with him two days earlier on the phone for our weekly Sunday afternoon call. My grandma, aunt, uncle and my dad’s cousin had gotten the call late at night to get to the hospital because he was fading fast, but they didn’t want me to see my dad in that condition. They didn’t want me to remember him that way so I wasn’t told anything until 6:00 the next morning when the call came.
I crumbled.
I fell apart.
I knew it was going to happen one day. I had expected to have my daddy longer, not to lose him just as I was learning about life.
Nobody at home understood what I was going through. Most of my friends took off, not knowing what to say or do. My best friend, the girl I knew I could count on for anything, was the one who stayed… the only one. The one who I am still best friends with to this very day.
My gram, Dad’s mom, died five weeks later of colon cancer that was diagnosed not six months earlier. I think she just gave up after she lost her youngest son.
After my dad died, my stepmom deeded their house back to the bank, took their three kids and moved to California to be with her oldest daughter.
Without telling me.
I will never forget calling on Christmas morning to wish them Merry Christmas and getting the this number has been disconnected message. I sat and sobbed. I frantically called my dad’s cousin who couldn’t believe that this woman didn’t have the guts to tell me she was moving. She didn’t have an address or a phone number for her because she hadn’t contacted her.
I didn’t hear from my stepmom until 3 ½ years later when my mom passed away unexpectedly. She wanted to play mother-figure to me and at the time we got along fine, cordially. I didn’t see my siblings for eight whole years. My sister would call now and again to say hi, but we never got the chance to be close. My brothers don’t talk to me at all.
I don’t speak to my stepmom.
My kid has my dad’s middle name as his first. I wanted to name him after my dad outright, but my stepsister went and did that first. He wasn’t even her dad. I tried the reverse, but it just didn’t sound right.
I miss my dad every day. It never gets easier. The pain changes but it never goes away. I see my dad in my own son every day, in his mannerisms and his kindness… in his temper, too.
He lives through my son, yet I still miss him so much.
