I said yesterday that there was more bad news. This I
got a couple of days ago. I heard from Peach after her visit with the oncologist.
She had a mastectomy a week or so ago and on Monday she had the stitches removed,
but she didn't get the full report on her condition until Friday.
It's "aggressive Stage III cancer" and they want
her to start chemotherapy this week.
Her mother was the first of my mother's siblings that I was
close to who died. Two of the older ones had died, but I didn't really know them
well. But Marge was like a second mother to me. She was also a chain smoker
and, like most of her siblings, she developed lung cancer. But she was the first one
to die of it (eventually they all did...my mother, in her days of wondering why she's
still alive while her siblings are all gone jokes that she sort of regrets never having
smoked ... but not really)
Marge was 61 when she died in about 1982. She had
been under treatment for quite some time and Peach remembers the hell her mother went
through with chemotherapy. I know that treatment now is not quite as primitive as it
was then, and there are more palliative therapies available than there were in 1982, but
still she is terrified, and I can't blame her.
I have offered to fly to Iowa to be with her as she starts
her course of treatment. She says she may want me to come, but is waiting until the
family meets with whoever is going to set up the whole program and then decide. But
I may be flying off to Iowa, a state I've never visited before.
With all the chaos of tragedy and sadness that has swirled
around us this week, none of it touches me personally, but I still feel like I'm
walking through mud, with difficulty thinking straight.
Char and her kids are back in the U.S. now and, as my
mother is fond of saying "life goes on," as they set about taking care of Mike's
affairs, and Flo's affairs.
I went to Atria yesterday, because I wanted to give the
latest news about Peach to my mother personally, not over the phone. I've said this
before and will probably say it again, but one of the most difficult things for me about
her dementia is the disconnect with her emotions. It is so hard for me to deliver
sad (or happy, for that matter) news to her and have her have almost no reaction.
Our dialog yesterday went something like:
ME: "Peach heard that she has stage 3 cancer and
will have to start chemotherapy."
HER: "Oh dear. Well life goes on, whether
you want it to or not." Then she looked over a a cabinet where there was a bouquet of
roses that had been given to her this week, and totally dismissing the news about Peach
she said, "Look at those flowers. They are dying. They were beautiful,
but now they're dying."
I'm not sure whether my tears were for Peach or for the
fact that my mother and I could not discuss Peach's upcoming chemotherapy treatment and
her fears about it. Once she had digested the news, she was no longer interested.
We sat there for awhile longer, talking about how old she is, how all of her
siblings are gone, and how it can't be cold outside (it was) because the leaves on the
trees were not moving, so it must be hot and how she didn't watch the World Series because
she somehow forgot it was on in between the time I called her and the time she walked back
to her chair after hanging up (so I didn't bother to call her yesterday).
It was one of those days where I needed to have my mother
to talk to, and couldn't bear to be with this person who looked and sounded like my
mother, but who wasn't the mother I needed. I know it's not her fault and I will be
fine when I see her next time, but I cut my visit short, went out to the parking lot, and
sat in the car to have a little cry. (I seem to be having these "little
cry" moments this week.)
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