the cancer is back
Apr. 14th, 2007 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verushka70My mom had a CT scan Wednesday. It showed two enlarged lymph nodes in the mediastinum (between her lungs) in the path of where she had radiation, and pleural effusion in the upper R lobe of her R lung. They thought, and I hoped, it might be just enlargement from the pneumonitis she's had since mid-January.
(She squeaks when she inhales deeply; it's the friction of her inflamed lung tissue from the radiation. But, I mean, she has been feeling pretty good -- she had Easter, whereas she was too fatigued to do Xmas. But for Easter, she did all the cooking herself, the whole leg of lamb; me & my one sister just helped with peeling and slicing up the potatoes and onions to roast with the lamb.)
But no such luck. The PET scan yesterday showed the cancer is back, in those two enlarged lymph nodes & in the upper R lobe where they had wedge resected one of the lumps. So. Another round of chemo is in the offing. Supposedly it won't be as bad as the last one, because Taxol won't be part of it.
I had a fight w/my bf last night. His idea of comfort was to say nothing and leave big silences in our conversation over sushi last night. I don't know wtf his problem is. I don't know why he's with me. It seems like my life is just one stress event & one catastrophe after another. But if he's going to be with me, then wtf, could I at least get some comfort? Couldn't he at least say something compassionate? Every time I stopped talking, there was just silence coming from him. I fuckin' hate men sometimes. They're so closed.
I got an 80 on my psych nursing test yesterday AM. That's a C. But I got a 97 on the last one. I can fail the final with a 72% and still get an A in the course. I thought that was really important all day yesterday... 'til my mom told me about the cancer's return.
Now I'm like, who fuckin' cares. Next Friday is the HESI exit exam. I have to get 850 minimum to graduate from this fuckin' nursing program and register for the nursing licensure exam (NCLEX-RN). Again... I'm like, who fuckin' cares. Why study. Why not just play Half-Life2 and watch DVDs for the next six days and say fuck it all. I'm getting pretty far in Half-Life2. It's not as good as Dreamfall the Longest Journey but whatever. I need the escapism. Except I brought my Xbox to my bf's last night so I could play it there and I left it there because if I have it at home I will never study for Monday's final and next Friday's exit exam.
I asked my mom did she want me to speed up getting married & having a baby & she said, "No, you do everything however you were going to do it; don't change anything, don't speed anything up for me." She said she just wants to be around for my wedding & my younger sister's baby's birth (which should be in November), and more, if she can be, but if not, just the baby and the wedding. I don't even have a ring from M------ yet. I don't know wtf his problem is. He says he doesn't have any money but he just bought a building with his sister. It would be just my luck, and typical of my life the last four years, for him to decide not to marry me in the end. Fuck it. I'd probably be better off. Just another person to take care of when I hardly take care of myself anymore.
I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up. If it wasn't for antidepressants I don't think I would have made it through the past year. I'm not convinced there's any point to making it beyond this, but I guess it would be kind of a waste to have spent the last 4 semesters getting my ass kicked by nursing school only to chuck it all and flunk out at this point, so close to the end. Fuck. That's exactly what I said when my mom told me "The cancer is back." I just said, "Fuck." She said, "Yeah, that's what I said in the doctor's office."
And I'm thinking, why have kids at all? why the fuck should I bother? the one person who I'd feel confident calling up & asking for help -- my mother, who had the five of us -- probably won't be around. And I'm not gonna ask my two sisters, the panic-and-anxiety disorder girls. They're worse off mentally than me. My younger sister was the big worry the last couple weeks, before my mom's cancer news: she's been in severe anxiety mode since she started having morning sickness. And that's with meds. Hate to say it, but, I feel sorry for her kid and it's not even born yet. A mother like that would make me crazy. She made her husband stop eating peanut butter because she has all these bizarro food issues and there is an extremely slight chance of some kind of liver disease that can occur from a fungus that grows on peanuts, and in peanut butter plants where they mix together peanuts from all over the place, supposedly this fungus can be distributed through all the peanut butter. I tried to logically reason with her -- a mistake, since the whole thing is irrational -- by saying, look, every year thousands of people die of the flu, the PLAIN OLD FLU -- how many people per year die of this peanut fungus liver infection? 2, maybe 3, out of the whole population? I don't know. It's not like I think I'd be a fantastic mother myself, but fer chrissakes, I'm not gonna let something the odds are so firmly against stop me from eating peanut butter -- much less prohibit my husband from eating it. The freaky thing (to me) is that her husband acquiesced! I swear, they are made for each other. It's... it's like the most perfectly co-dependent, crazy union of two people like I've never seen. He fits her anxiety and neuroses like hand in glove. And I don't think that's a good thing. At least my other panic & anxiety sister has a much more reasonable, laid back husband who tells her straight off when she's making crazy talk (just not in front of their kids, and I give him points for that).
Anyway, with these kind of genes, I'm doubtful about the prospects for any offspring. They're going to be panic or depression prone, genetically, because they're our offspring. Even if they aren't terrorized by a crazy, controlling, violent father like we were, they'll still have the genetic potential to be miserable and paralyzed. With those kids of odds, I don't know. Four or five years ago all I could think about was getting married & having a baby. Now I'm like, uhhhhh, wait... is this such a good idea? The longer I go not doing it, the less like a good idea it seems. And my girlfriends at school are no help. They're all like, "Don't do it! They'll ruin your lives? You want to travel? You can't!" I mean, they were joking, but there was a real edge of regret to their voices.
I think my friend E--- regrets having kids because its tied her to her husband all these years, and he's such a controlling, jealous weirdo, she feels guilty going out to lunch with us, like he's going to check up on her. It's like my parents' marriage, which was shit. I know my bf isn't like that, but... with my problems, and his problems, it just seems like combining them, and then reproducing... a bad fuckin' idea. And if my kids aren't going to have any grandparents except M----'s parents, who are even more dysfunctional and crazy than my family -- well, they'd be better off with none. His father's an alcoholic who disappears for days on end, and his mother spends 9-10 months of the years in Mexico (although that is kind of a bonus, as far as I'm concerned). She hates me anyway because I'm not Catholic or Mexican.
It's funny. I knew it would be bad when the CT scan results came back with the enlarged lymph nodes. I just knew it was the cancer, that it was back. But I tried to talk my mom & my sister out of it. It's probably the inflammation from the pneumonitis, I said. It could have been. Even the docs said that might be what it was. But they rushed to get her into the PET scan to be sure. And, well, there you go. Friday the 13th. Figures.
Ironically, my friend M---- at school yesterday, on Friday the 13th, got 2 bags of Cheetos from the vending machine between morning and afternoon classes, and then she won 4th and 2nd prize in the nursing club raffle: a canvas tote bag, and a $200-off coupon for the Martin review for the NCLEX. It was so oddly like the previous night's CSI episode "Lab Rats", which was Hodges' lucky day. (I wasn't even going to watch it -- Hodges is my least favorite character -- but it was actually pretty good.)
Well, Friday the 13th. One person's luck is another person's quagmire.
(She squeaks when she inhales deeply; it's the friction of her inflamed lung tissue from the radiation. But, I mean, she has been feeling pretty good -- she had Easter, whereas she was too fatigued to do Xmas. But for Easter, she did all the cooking herself, the whole leg of lamb; me & my one sister just helped with peeling and slicing up the potatoes and onions to roast with the lamb.)
But no such luck. The PET scan yesterday showed the cancer is back, in those two enlarged lymph nodes & in the upper R lobe where they had wedge resected one of the lumps. So. Another round of chemo is in the offing. Supposedly it won't be as bad as the last one, because Taxol won't be part of it.
I had a fight w/my bf last night. His idea of comfort was to say nothing and leave big silences in our conversation over sushi last night. I don't know wtf his problem is. I don't know why he's with me. It seems like my life is just one stress event & one catastrophe after another. But if he's going to be with me, then wtf, could I at least get some comfort? Couldn't he at least say something compassionate? Every time I stopped talking, there was just silence coming from him. I fuckin' hate men sometimes. They're so closed.
I got an 80 on my psych nursing test yesterday AM. That's a C. But I got a 97 on the last one. I can fail the final with a 72% and still get an A in the course. I thought that was really important all day yesterday... 'til my mom told me about the cancer's return.
Now I'm like, who fuckin' cares. Next Friday is the HESI exit exam. I have to get 850 minimum to graduate from this fuckin' nursing program and register for the nursing licensure exam (NCLEX-RN). Again... I'm like, who fuckin' cares. Why study. Why not just play Half-Life2 and watch DVDs for the next six days and say fuck it all. I'm getting pretty far in Half-Life2. It's not as good as Dreamfall the Longest Journey but whatever. I need the escapism. Except I brought my Xbox to my bf's last night so I could play it there and I left it there because if I have it at home I will never study for Monday's final and next Friday's exit exam.
I asked my mom did she want me to speed up getting married & having a baby & she said, "No, you do everything however you were going to do it; don't change anything, don't speed anything up for me." She said she just wants to be around for my wedding & my younger sister's baby's birth (which should be in November), and more, if she can be, but if not, just the baby and the wedding. I don't even have a ring from M------ yet. I don't know wtf his problem is. He says he doesn't have any money but he just bought a building with his sister. It would be just my luck, and typical of my life the last four years, for him to decide not to marry me in the end. Fuck it. I'd probably be better off. Just another person to take care of when I hardly take care of myself anymore.
I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up. If it wasn't for antidepressants I don't think I would have made it through the past year. I'm not convinced there's any point to making it beyond this, but I guess it would be kind of a waste to have spent the last 4 semesters getting my ass kicked by nursing school only to chuck it all and flunk out at this point, so close to the end. Fuck. That's exactly what I said when my mom told me "The cancer is back." I just said, "Fuck." She said, "Yeah, that's what I said in the doctor's office."
And I'm thinking, why have kids at all? why the fuck should I bother? the one person who I'd feel confident calling up & asking for help -- my mother, who had the five of us -- probably won't be around. And I'm not gonna ask my two sisters, the panic-and-anxiety disorder girls. They're worse off mentally than me. My younger sister was the big worry the last couple weeks, before my mom's cancer news: she's been in severe anxiety mode since she started having morning sickness. And that's with meds. Hate to say it, but, I feel sorry for her kid and it's not even born yet. A mother like that would make me crazy. She made her husband stop eating peanut butter because she has all these bizarro food issues and there is an extremely slight chance of some kind of liver disease that can occur from a fungus that grows on peanuts, and in peanut butter plants where they mix together peanuts from all over the place, supposedly this fungus can be distributed through all the peanut butter. I tried to logically reason with her -- a mistake, since the whole thing is irrational -- by saying, look, every year thousands of people die of the flu, the PLAIN OLD FLU -- how many people per year die of this peanut fungus liver infection? 2, maybe 3, out of the whole population? I don't know. It's not like I think I'd be a fantastic mother myself, but fer chrissakes, I'm not gonna let something the odds are so firmly against stop me from eating peanut butter -- much less prohibit my husband from eating it. The freaky thing (to me) is that her husband acquiesced! I swear, they are made for each other. It's... it's like the most perfectly co-dependent, crazy union of two people like I've never seen. He fits her anxiety and neuroses like hand in glove. And I don't think that's a good thing. At least my other panic & anxiety sister has a much more reasonable, laid back husband who tells her straight off when she's making crazy talk (just not in front of their kids, and I give him points for that).
Anyway, with these kind of genes, I'm doubtful about the prospects for any offspring. They're going to be panic or depression prone, genetically, because they're our offspring. Even if they aren't terrorized by a crazy, controlling, violent father like we were, they'll still have the genetic potential to be miserable and paralyzed. With those kids of odds, I don't know. Four or five years ago all I could think about was getting married & having a baby. Now I'm like, uhhhhh, wait... is this such a good idea? The longer I go not doing it, the less like a good idea it seems. And my girlfriends at school are no help. They're all like, "Don't do it! They'll ruin your lives? You want to travel? You can't!" I mean, they were joking, but there was a real edge of regret to their voices.
I think my friend E--- regrets having kids because its tied her to her husband all these years, and he's such a controlling, jealous weirdo, she feels guilty going out to lunch with us, like he's going to check up on her. It's like my parents' marriage, which was shit. I know my bf isn't like that, but... with my problems, and his problems, it just seems like combining them, and then reproducing... a bad fuckin' idea. And if my kids aren't going to have any grandparents except M----'s parents, who are even more dysfunctional and crazy than my family -- well, they'd be better off with none. His father's an alcoholic who disappears for days on end, and his mother spends 9-10 months of the years in Mexico (although that is kind of a bonus, as far as I'm concerned). She hates me anyway because I'm not Catholic or Mexican.
It's funny. I knew it would be bad when the CT scan results came back with the enlarged lymph nodes. I just knew it was the cancer, that it was back. But I tried to talk my mom & my sister out of it. It's probably the inflammation from the pneumonitis, I said. It could have been. Even the docs said that might be what it was. But they rushed to get her into the PET scan to be sure. And, well, there you go. Friday the 13th. Figures.
Ironically, my friend M---- at school yesterday, on Friday the 13th, got 2 bags of Cheetos from the vending machine between morning and afternoon classes, and then she won 4th and 2nd prize in the nursing club raffle: a canvas tote bag, and a $200-off coupon for the Martin review for the NCLEX. It was so oddly like the previous night's CSI episode "Lab Rats", which was Hodges' lucky day. (I wasn't even going to watch it -- Hodges is my least favorite character -- but it was actually pretty good.)
Well, Friday the 13th. One person's luck is another person's quagmire.