Dweilen met de kraan open.

My mother was going to get chemo today. A different and lighter one than the hardcore chemo she has been having since that didn’t seem to help at all. As she got up she was feeling dizzy and she was having trouble getting dressed – putting on clothing the wrong way around, etc. The same stuff that she did when she had a fist-sized tumor in her head. We knew that there were spots in her head that they were hoping to tackle along with the cancer in her liver and lung, and so the immediate suspicion was that those had grown. They did a CAT scan when she got to the hospital, which confirmed that there was another sizable tumor on the spot of the large tumor that kicked this whole ordeal off. They want to use radiology to fight that, but they can’t do chemo at the same time, so her appointment was immediately cancelled and she was on her way back home. Next week, she’ll have another MRI to see what the cause of the spread is, which in turn will determine the exact course of action.

So it’s another blow in a long, continuous string of setbacks, and my mother is rightly getting kind of tired of it all. The treatments at this point are meant to prolong her life, so it shouldn’t be such a surprise that they’re not really solving anything, but it’s still a bitter pill to swallow, especially when my mother is no longer certain how long she wants to keep at it. What’s going to happen when they stop the treatments? Sure, they’re not doing anything to get rid of the cancer, but my guess is that it is doing something to keep it at bay. How fast will it spread, and what does that mean to my mother’s overall health?

It’s like ice-skatting uphill, and it makes you think some really silly things. The other day I was wondering why she was being punished so badly. Why we are all being punished so badly. What did I do that my mother deserves this? Oh, right, I don’t believe in a cosmic overlord and thinking these things is a ridiculous wallowing in self-pity. Knock it off.