Surprise!

by Dennis••12•Posted inJournal

As you all know, Marco and Clarissa (together with their ultra-cute kid Holland) are in the Netherlands. They are here to show off their new spawn, meet some friends and see my mother before she kicks the bucket. We’ve been hanging out, and it’s been great. Naturally, Dennis had to pick the one busy weekend I had to come back from Paris for a few days. Bastard. And Jim was in London so, being a man after my own heart, he hopped a plane to come and spend some time with us this weekend. It looked to be a busy weekend, and I wasn’t really sure how I was going to manage it all. Luckily, it was all taken care of for me without my knowledge. Not suspecting a thing, I went to pick up (crafty, misinformation) Jim from the airport and when we got home there were bunches of people, and tequila, and laughter and tiramisu and music. My brother, Marco, Clarissa, Holland…even Frank and Eva! Later we were joined by Dennis as a small contingent of us went to Zebra lounge for some more craziness. All in all I had a great time and must give my compliments to Moulsari for orchestrating the surprise so well.

Weirdest moment of the night was courtesy of Jim; wrestling with a random Irish girl while standing in line for french fries. If it wasn’t for him, she never would’ve attacked me. Jim’s an enabler. :)

Dweilen met de kraan open.

by Dennis••2•Posted inJournal

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.