Family crisis stabilized

Well, my aunt has Stage Four tumors in her lungs and abdomen, and one little tumor in her brain, and her survival chances are in the single digits, but my uncle thinks they’re going to try chemo anyway. She had surgery today to fix her intestine that the abdominal tumor perforated, and she’ll need a colostomy bag, and right now she’s heavily sedated and on a vent and everything. She’s basically decomposing, but Mom goes ballistic whenever I try to point this out (even when I use much gentler terms than that). So I will just shut up. My grandparents took it well but I don’t think they’re aware of just how serious the situation is. They haven’t seen my aunt yet and when Mom told them she tried to sound as optimistic as possible.

If it were me, I would not want chemo, I would not want the colostomy surgery, I would just want to go as fast as possible. But it’s not me and I hope it never will be.

I do appreciate everyone’s good wishes.

Family crisis intervention

My sister just called to inform me that early this morning my aunt N. had some bad seizures and they rushed her to the hospital and discovered she’s full of tumors, in her lungs, her brain, everywhere. She is in ICU. They haven’t seen an oncologist yet but I’m assuming N. is going to die, probably quite rapidly. I hope she’s out of it and doesn’t realize what’s going on. The fact that she has cancer doesn’t surprise me — she is an alcoholic and she smokes like a chimney — but this was so sudden. I saw her just a few days ago and she was right as rain.

For over a year now my grandmother has been at death’s door and we were laying bets on how long she would last, but it seems she may very well outlive her daughter. Grandma and Grandpa don’t know yet. Mom is going to have to go and tell them and I volunteered to go with, to provide moral support.

This is a rather sucky situation.