fuck cancer

"He was only 52"

fuck fuck fuck.

cancer is evil.

so sorry to hear of your troubles tipsy ....

i genuinely believe that the evil lump has moved down a generation.

i dont recall any of my friends parents dying of cancer when i was a kid, and yet, my youngest (9), is perfectly understanding of the situation ...

so horrible, so sad to hear about that. Hope you are doing okay.

I am rly feeling the sentiment of this thread lately

I have a friend in Atlanta who had cancer a few years ago, and then beat it and got better, and then it came back, and then he went to the hospital, and then he fucking died. I found this out because I realized we hadn't talked on Facebook in a few weeks (which we did pretty regularly) and found a wall full of RIP Kyle messages. I'd known him thru online for years and got to stay with him for like a week when I was travelling a few summers ago; we totally hit it off and he had the coolest little dude of a son and an awesome wife and I was planning a trip back down to Atlanta this summer to see him.

This is the second friend (like not acquaintance but actual *friend*) of mine to die this year. It is seriously bumming me the fuck out.

fuck all of this shit so fucking hard, what the fuck

tipsy and mark and I and y'all should go forge a new plane of reality where cancer is not permitted to exist.

Aside from something happening to my children, the cancer coming back is the negative thing I think about the most. "He beat it, got better, got it again and died." That's a common refrain.

My oncologist says if this happens again the same way, he's going to take out the whole thing instead of waiting around for a third time. I don't know what to think of that.

I totally hear you, Steve. I remember that day, sitting on the throne at work, reading the obituaries and goddam, the hell is there a picture of Jonathan in there for? Everyone has those friends that after awhile, you only see every so often, but you don't expect the friendship to end on Page 4B.

And I hear you too, Mark. It's just that there's not a damn thing i can think of to say to you right now. No one will ever replace her, but there are people all over the world with thoughts of you and your family in mind. Who knows if that means anything, but there's that.

tipsy and mark and I and y'all should go forge a new plane of reality where cancer is not permitted to exist.

― hoda nkotb (Stevie D(eux)), Thursday, April 25, 2013 9:25 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

that is a genuinely really beautiful thought and i hope you guys can make this happen in a place large enough for the rest of us to live in as well. this shit scares me! kudos to anyone with the personal fortitude to live through it on a super personal basis.

Until now, ppl under the age of 40 getting cancer has been, like, a challenging but ultimately non-threatening thing in my mind. Like, sure, you *could* die from it but you are young! healthy! etc! of course you're going to get better; why wouldn't you? Apparently that's not quite the case.

Oh, no. While cancer is mostly a disease of aging (eg. the median age of breast cancer diagnosis is 61), neoplasms in the young are more aggressive (the proliferating stem cells are more active, start with longer telomeres, and respond less to normal senescence/apoptosis signals).

Most cancers are seen in the aged, where they have been slowly doubling and possibly metastasizing from to other tissues for around a decade before they reach a diagnosable sizes of about a millimeter. That long run up is one reason clinical trials of breast and prostate screening in older people has such disappointing results (screen 2500 women yearly for a decade, terrify 1000 with a false positive, needlessly treat 5-15, to prevent one breast cancer death), and some guidelines are a-changing. The screening catches too many cancers that won't ultimately kill, and can't detect the more malignant cancers (that have commonly already metastasized) early enough.

To be diagnosed in the young, any cancer must have had a much faster doubling rate, and is naturally way more malignant.

recommendations about breast and prost

n the elderly, cancer generally has been present, growing exponentially at a slow doubling rate of around once per 90 days, for over a decade, doubling roughly once every 90 days, before reaching diagnosable size of about a millimeter.

The young haven't

Its one reason the ACS has been changing its recommendations regarding breast and prostate screening (it doesn't catch the really malignant cancers early enough, and catches too many of the ones

Ignore the last 4 lines there. Forgot to scroll down.

well, for all the concern, that was a lovely day.
me and the lads went to the place where we spread the ashes ..
we sat/chatted and then walked through some gorgeous countryside.
then headed to a lovely pub for food etc.
both boys were chatty and relaxed.
best day i have had in a long long time.
could not have wished for a better way to celebrate the life of the person that created my perfect life.

Good to hear, sir. Best as ever, always.

hi mark, happy for you that it went so well, but at the same time it's heartbreaking that such a day ever came to pass for you. sounds like you got a real feeling of togetherness out of it, glad that there are some very real positives for you to find solace in.

sorry if that sounds a bit overfamiliar btw, but i think that anyone who reads this thread knows what a nightmare you've been through and is rooting for you and yours for the future

re togetherness : that's actually spot on nickb ..

after all the evilness of the lump, it has taken a while to come to realise such simple truths, but hey, would like to think we turned a corner today.

well, i most certainly did.

xpost : behave re your concerns re being overfamiliar ! i would not post here if i were worried re such things ..

Hi all

Surgery over, drs happy, results whenever, we'll take the interim as a happy gift

Best wishes mark. Survive as a unit before worrying about meta consequences im

Surgery over, drs happy, results whenever, we'll take the interim as a happy gift

:-)

.....

genuinely hope things go to plan ..

Thks mark.

With genuine admiration with yr having dealt with what you have

Mark e, best wishes to you and your boys. I'm so glad your day was nice. I have learned that celebrating a person can feel wonderful, even when their absence still hurts. My sister's funeral was one of the most positive experiences of my life, in addition to being the most terrible. A very strange mix of feelings.

Have resolved to volunteer for the Cancer Society when my babies are a bit bigger. They were a wonderful source of support for my family through everything, and anyone going through this shit deserves as much help from as many people as possible.

A couple of Mondays ago I learned a very close family friend, Julie, (she lived with us when I was growing up and was like a second mom) died from the lung cancer she had been fighting for about 6 months. About half an hour before I got that news I learned my best friend's nephew, who has been fighting leukemia for 10 years (first diagnosed when he was 5), made a completely unexpected recovery shortly after the doctors had finally admitted defeat. So it was an evening of oh my god Noah is well there is hope yayayayay!!!! to oh my god Julie is dead.

A funny story about Noah - when he got the all clear all he wanted to do was get his drivers license . So his dad took him to get his learners permit. First thing he did? Drove the car straight into a wall. He was fine of course but damn chill Noah.

All clear iirc

oh that's good news dm, glad to hear it

Very!

I'm dutifully assisting a mother-in-law's request that she receive home care through the late stages of her cancer even though it means mopping up stomach acid from g-tube holes and changing a diaper. Every time we bundle her up and take her to hospital for some new complication she seems ready to be admitted to palliative, which would be an enormous relief and a huge benefit to her health instead of having her cared for by her talentless children. Then, they apply the right cream and/or install a new thing and she "rallies", imagines she'll be walking again by the next morning and we're lifting her back into the front seat, taking her home. Happily she's still got her sense of humour and it's pretty easy to get a smile out of her even in the worst of times. Tough lady.

She died yesterday. Happily she settled down and didn't keep up with the Unwise Rushing Around and died peacefully and intact instead of some rupturing sepsis bullshit. Lots of family here. I can't get out of bed. I was only looking after her two days a week but my bf was doing it full time, a superhero.

I'm so sorry to hear that. my thoughts are with both of you. <3

Best indeed to all, and my deep condolences.

Grisly but lol: my favourite cousin, a nurse, 70, remarked "happily we don't have to worry about a drawn-out cancer with ~you~. You Palletts are gifted at dying. Aneurysm *pow*! Heart attack *pow*! Out like a light! Very respectful." <3

Thanks for the kind words. Feeling stunned but ok. Worried bf will crash next week so I'm making sure he's got massages and madeleines

both v essential

My condolences, goon.

condolences to you and yours, dear fgti.

^

mother in law (pancreatic cancer) is now in, idk, I guess you could say the home stretch. Pancreas has stopped working altogether now. She can digest juice but is unable to digest much food at all without throwing up or severe indigestion. Her oncologist gave her a range of options, but she has decided she doesn't want to go to the ends of the earth to fight it, or go through rounds of surgery or chemo, she'd just rather see out the rest of her days in relative comfort, as pain free as she can manage for as long as she can manage.

it is probably the most at peace she has seemed in the past year that she's been going through this. and it's definitely reassuring to talk to her and know that she knows what she wants, and she is happy to help anyone around her come to the same understanding. she feels wise now.

but but but...now i have to move through the selfish process of ME being able to let her go. I think I am, in many ways. I am not grieving her yet, I'm just full of sadness that there will officially now be an End. With a capital E. Even if I don't know when it will be, just knowing that she knows, and that I know...it means I have to confront a lot of things that I haven't faced in many many years. And honestly, big fucking deal boo hoo me 'dealing with' 'letting her go' as if my allowing her to go has any bearing on it.

She has loved me as her own daughter from the day we met, for the last 14 years of my life. In many ways, I am losing a mother...she has been my surrogate all these years away from home...there's no way for this not to be hard. So I am just trying to accept that it is hard, but it is worth it, that this time is still precious and meaningful and to be present, to enjoy that she is lucid and loving and talkative.

i just...life, man. it's some heavy shit.

I'm so sorry, VG.

Your feelings of loss are valid and entirely okay. They aren't selfish! Losing someone you love is so fucking hard and it is okay, necessary in fact, to grieve. Maybe you want to be strong for your mother-in-law and your husband, and that's a very kind thing to do, but if there's anywhere you can come to talk about how this loss is hard for you, this is the place.

oooh VG :(

this is my big 'what if .. ' scenario.
bh went through chemo/surgery/chemo, for no gain at all.
in fact, there is a chance that the surgery sped up the end game considerably (not to mention the side effects of the chemo), so i live with a massive 'what if she had said no to the chaos, and lived a normal life until the evil lump took over' groove hanging over me all the time.
so, i totally understand your MILs choice.
should i ever find myself in a similar situation, i would like to think i had the strength to make such a decision.
but damn, that's a heavy one as a family to deal with.

adult life is hard work.

This is some rollercoaster shit, yo. some days good, some days terrible. She sounds so frail now, every time I get off the phone I have a little cry. The only way to talk about how I am feeling is to talk about this hour right now. I'm finding that on the days where I wake up full of sadness, those are the days when I need to bury myself in a fantasy novel for a few hours. That's about the best therapy I've found next to long quiet hugs with Mr Veg.

Her nausea is getting worse. my brother in law was able to get her set up with a marijuana vaporizer, to help stem some of the nausea during the day, and to help her a little with her appetite, so she can eat least eat a bit of something, even though her digestion isn't so hot anymore. Mr Veg visited with her this afternoon, and I asked how she was and he grinned & said 'Stoned'.

A positive that has come out of this whole experience is that I have for one of the first times in my life been able to go to my own Mum for advice and comfort, as a daughter, admitting defeat and asking for her love. She nursed her own mother when I was a teenager, and she has been so supportive and has so much good insight, it's been really nice. I always tried not to be defenseless with her in the past (long story)...but me needing her and her being able to give me what I need has been a really wonderful thing to experience.

Apparently my grandmother already had cancer while her husband was suffering from terminal cancer. She died last week. She broke her arm last year. They discovered it was due to an advanced form of kidney cancer. She immediately talked about euthanasia. In the end she opted for palliative sedation. The loss is very... conflicting. I never had a good relationship with my grandmother. (All *assholes*, she the worst of all, largely due to her alcoholism and the abuse she inflicted on my dad.) It has been a rollercoaster for me. In the past two years losing two grandparents. But y'know they were old, at least they had years.

And still FUCK CANCER. Awful awful disease. But one thing I am now convinced of: talk about euthanasia and/or palliative sedation early on. Do it. Look into it. Noone wants to suffer.

Oh Nath I'm so sorry :-( Gecondoleerd.

Oh Nath...I'm so sorry.

I'm still wrestling with the realities of palliative sedation. I think that's on the cards for my mother inlaw, this from you Nath makes me feel less conflicted about it. I know that you are right.

I don't know if I'm going to have my mother in law for much longer. It seems like maybe a matter of days now. she's fading so fast. I hate to clog this up, but i don't know where else to go to let these things out of me. I wrote a whole bunch of stuff down and if it's okay I'm just going to put it here to get it out of me.

I Am A Child

I was 15 when my grandmother passed away. Growing up, we had been very close. Many weekends I had spent at her house where she taught me how to sew, how to bake, how to do crosswords. We played scrabble together, watched the matinee movie on tv together for Saturday lunch. If I stayed long enough she would take me to church with her on Sundays. She always assumed I would be bored, and tried to get me to go to Sunday school instead…but her grandiose church with the incense and the stained glass windows was what I loved. I didn’t care if what they said was kind of long and boring, I loved sitting in the church with my Nan. It was and still is one of my favorite places. My personal place of holiness.

She had been on dialysis for kidney failure for a number of years, but she got very sick when I reached my teens, and was eventually hospitalized, and that was where she died.

I don't remember a lot of her illness. Nan changed a lot when she got sick. She stopped wanting to read, or do crosswords, and didn't seem very interested in talking much...and one of the last times I visited her, she didn't know who I was at all, and was talking to me about people she went to school with. It scared me enough that no-one really expected me to see it worsen.

I think it was a function of my age that I didn’t really think about her dying. And if I did, I didn’t have much of a logical connection to what that really meant, how that would feel. But it hit me hard, like a punch in the stomach, when they lowered the coffin and it made its way out of the chapel to the crematorium. I had a visual cue that told me I wasn't going to see her again. The realization hurt so much, and scared me, as abrupt and painful is someone had just torn off my arm.

The terror I felt at my grandma suddenly not existing anymore stayed with me for a long time, manifesting into a lifelong fear of death and dying that had started when I was very young and became a fear that could wake me from my sleep with a full-blown panic attack. But that was a thing I tried to keep inside. I didn’t know how to make it stop, or go away, so I just tried not to think about it.

Flashforward to 37 year old me.

In an unlikely but wonderful turn of events, over the past 10 years my mother in law has slowly been filling in the hole that was left after my grandmother’s death.

For one thing, she was roughly the same age as Nan. Her personality was completely different to Nan’s – Nan was a very proper lady, not prim or even stern, but just … very even. Practical and no-nonsense. Mauraid was effusive, full of hugs and bursting to overflowing with love and praise for her own immediate family, as well as me, the interloper. I wasn’t a stranger with Mauraid, I was her daughter. But her age afforded me the same gift of wisdom and experience that my Grandmother had. I have a voracious appetite for knowledge and unfettered curiosity - Finally, a new person who had been places, seen thing, who could fill my bucket with new stories of a different life, a different childhood, new other worldly experiences.

We played scrabble together. We talked about the books that we read. We watched movies together. And we shared a lot of time together. She drew me into her family and loved me like a daughter, and I relished the warmth of having that kind of love so far away from my family.

The greatest gift we shared was when we began to go to church together at Christmas. Neither of us regular church goers, but this time together was us going to say hello to the people far from us – I could commune with the memory of my grandmother, and Mauraid could commune with her brother who had passed a few years before, and her mother who had died when Mauraid was a young girl of 21. That was the time when we were closest, and I felt like I had gained a new power, a power to harness my past and steer it in a new direction.

Time is a wheel. And our wheel of fortune took a turn for the worse. A year ago, my mother-inlaw was diagnosed with Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. The prognosis was 3 months. At first it was a blow, for her, for our family, everyone. I feared the worst and struggled not to grieve her daily. Yet, even through the wheel had spun us down to the depths, it slowly was spinning her, and us up out of the bad. Undertaking a strange and rather radical homeopathic therapy, my mother in law surprised her doctors, and us, and lived for another year after her diagnosis with no growth in her tumors.

The year lulled me back into the routine of our life, and I got used to the idea that we might have her around for a while, despite the initial scare.

Oh, cruel fortune.

We all tell ourselves stories so that we don't have to face the inevitable truth. But the truth had arrived. Mauraid’s tumors were now growing, her pancreas was obstructed, and the wheel had again begun turning downwards once more. Much as I wanted to hide from it, the truth was here and bearing down.

Terminal stages of an illness causes a remarkable shedding of niceties. Not only in family, but in the patient. At least, that’s what I have seen in my family. Mauraid most noticeably. Where once she had not wanted to talk about what would happen if it got worse, where the knowledge of the growth inside of her had kept her awake at night and scared her to tears, she was now steely and resolute in her acceptance of what she now saw as the inevitable end.

My denial of the truth was now seeming almost quaint, childlike…and kind of sad. The more my world was challenged, the more flimsy it felt…and the more lost I felt. I couldn’t hang onto this idea that Mauraid was going to live forever. Yet in spite of what I could see happening right in front of me, I was still clutching tightly to my fear of death with both hands.

I've watched her get more and more frail...more and more tired...She can no longer digest any food. Her eyesight is worsening. I can hear her teeth when she talks. Physically, it seems like she just melts a little more every day. Conversation grows increasingly difficult. She trails off in mid sentence, her mind like tufts of dandelion seeds on a windy day.

Where at 16 I was on the fringes of my grandmother's last days, now at 37 I have a front row seat. I have sat with her as she as she told me plainly, with overwhelming love how much I mean to her, her hopes for my future. She has talked openly about how ready she is for her imminent end while gently holding my hand, imploring me not to be sad as my tears of fear and denial fell freely.

With Mauraid now, I am again a child.

When it first became clear that Mauriad was heading towards her last days, I wanted to pull the emergency brake. I wasn't ready, I needed more time to prepare for the truth. But life, as we know, and death, are just not like that. You don't get to choose what you're a part of. You can only choose to participate or withdraw. I love her too much to withdraw...so, here now I find myself walking into the water with her.

Every step that I'm taking with her fills me with terror, dread, fear, knowing that I am walking towards an eventual end where she is no longer walking beside me. I cannot shake that same terror I felt when I realized I would not have my grandmother anymore. I am full of selfish fear of letting go. But it’s a whole different thing when you know full well that your fear of letting go is completely futile. The heart wants what it wants, and Mauraid wants to go. And go she will.

My friend's mother said that working through suffering together is one of the most beautiful parts of being human.

Seeing the fraction of what I have seen, I know that to be true.

I have seen what strong stuff this woman is made of.. In her final days, she has proved to be stronger than the sum of all of us. She is ready. Seeing unwavering resolve every day is challenging my fear of letting her go, like grease slowly working its way into a long-rusted hinge.

I realized that as much as part of me wishes that I could detach like my 16 year old self and hide from the grownup realities of death, I'm mostly glad that I'm bearing witness to these adult experiences. I don't feel any more grownup for having seen them, I certainly don't enjoy them while they are happening, but I am beginning to understand that maybe my fear of death is more an echo from my childhood, a last remaining vestige of youth; the more time I spent with Mauraid in her final days, the more it seems to me that age and a certain kind of wisdom turns that childhood monster behind the closet door into a new brightly-lit doorway out of the darkness...a place where death becomes a well-lighted passage out of the dark, sad, lonely wilderness that is terminal illness.

Wow VG, you brought tears to my eyes. That is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I've read in a long time.

Much love to you and your family <3

what a brilliant, and very heartbreaking, post VG.

this hit hard.

When it first became clear that Mauriad was heading towards her last days, I wanted to pull the emergency brake. I wasn't ready, I needed more time to prepare for the truth. But life, as we know, and death, are just not like that.

this is my world to the power of x.
1 year on the speed of the loss of lucidity still hurts as i was denied the chance to say some final words of love.

cheers for posting this VG ...

Coming from you that means an awful lot, mark. Thank you :)

Mother in law passed away on Thursday night.

I visited her on Tuesday after I posted the story above, and she had completely deteriorated -- they had a hospital bed in the room, oxygen machine, and she on pain meds so pretty much out of it, but she was still breathing regularly. It was a horrible shock, but also the flag that we didn't have a lot of time left with her. We got a phonecall Wednesday morning that she was only breathing once a minute, and we drove right over. That morning we all thought that we would be saying final goodbyes by lunchtime. We stayed til 10pm that night, she had made no change. We went home and tried (and failed) to sleep, and came back first thing the next morning. Still no change. The hospice nurse visited, and said based on her vital signs she would have said she only had maybe an hour or two at best...the fact that she'd been holding out for 36 hours that way was unusual. All we could do was keep up the pain meds so that her breathing, such as it was, wouldn't become labored, and that eventually whatever was keeping her ticking along like a metronome would eventually let go. We left that night at 9pm...and at 11:50pm we got the call that she had finally passed.

Even though we knew it was coming, it was still sad, as expected. But going through this whole experience, it was about the nicest kind of sad I've felt, in that she wasn't in any pain when she did go, that we had all been together at the house with her, and taking care of each other while we were taking care of her because there were huge stretches of time where there was literally nothing we could do except, just be together. And as a family we hadn't been together like that, talking, laughing, sharing stories, hanging out, for over a year. So it was a strange kind of gift that she gave us.

But she left us some incredible memories too. That woman kept everything of sentimental value to her, from Mr Veg's first ever preschool artwork, her own baby booties and baby blanket, boxes upon boxes of photos, a handwritten 'memory book' of stories from her childhood that she'd been filling out over the past couple of years...and the greatest treasure of all, my brother in law last night found a stack of love letters, from my father in law to her, written in 1964 one month after they met, up until a few months later when he proposed to her and they married. They're so beautiful and simple and full of life and love and youthfulness.

The saddest now is going to be helping my father in law. He has dementia -- not so bad that he doesn't know where she is, but we have to give him a list of 'events' to tell him where she is now, what's going to happen to the ashes, when the funeral will be, etc...and he has to consult that list many many times throughout the day to keep his compass pointed in the right direction. The stress has rattled him to his core. Occasionally he gets so anxious he forgets that she's gone and we have to tell him again, or he'll forget completely where he is for a moment. It's so hard for him right now. To have him look at you and say "I never wanted to see this day" with tears in his eyes is just, it breaks my heart.

seriously, fuck cancer.

I'm so sorry, Veg. Love to you and yours.

oh vg ..

<3

fuck cancer.

<3