The other day my mother had an appointment with a surgeon to install a small subdermal device that’s going to make it easier to repeatedly hook her up to an IV and as they were discussing things, the surgeon remarked that people with her condition hardly ever survive for longer than a year after diagnosis. Lung cancer that has spread to her head and liver, and she’s still around a doing relatively well. It was quite a shock to her, and it appears that reality has started to penetrate her optimism more and more.
She’s had the two radiation sessions on her head and they’re going to start with the experimental chemo-treatment soon. The radiation has made her hair soft and brittle and it’s finally starting to fall out. Soon she’ll be bald, but still beautiful. That was a big shock to her, too, especially since she’s managed to retain her hair throughout all the treatments, against all odds. It’s almost symbolic to her slowly dawning realisation that’s losing this struggle. Like Samson.
I’m afraid we don’t have much longer to go. If the cancer spreads to her lymphatic system she’s no longer elligible for the experimental treatment, and she’s still dealing with a lot of pain. Regarding that pain, her GP wants her to cut down on the use of morphine, because it causes her to lose weight, and she’s on the light side as it is, and he wants her to make use of other medicine, and the research doctor, the one leading the experimental treatment, wants her to cut down on other medicine (for an as of yet unknown reason). Her GP desperately wants to talk to the researcher to find out the reasoning, because he feels that the research doesn’t really care about the state in which my mother is, but rather her research, and my GP, who doesn’t think it likely the research will amount to anything positive for my mother, wants to put his efforts into making my mother’s last days as painfree as possible.
I need to start coming to terms with the fact that this is really happening, that’s she’s really ill, and that she’s really dying. By all accounts it’s a miracle that she’s still alive, but I can’t keep counting on miracles, and have to prepare for reality.