Cancer Came Home

Do you ever feel like life is laughing at you? That’s me today. This week. This month. This indeterminate time in space. There’s a long story here, one that I am currently too tired to go into but suffice to say that it culminates in now, here, gone 3am sitting in my children’s bedroom next to a hospital bed on which my mother is half sleeping, half morphine-induced stupor – finally. She spent the last four hours throwing up.

As she has the last two weeks really but yes, “steady decline” is what I say when people ask how she is.

My dad, sister, brother and I all take turns sitting awake with her 24 hours of the day. Her cancer treatment and immunotherapy are now constant. When we control the pain and discomfort successfully she can’t help herself when she vomits – so we sit vigil, 24 hours a day. No one wants to die choking on their own vomit.

In November she had the all clear for travel – her incurable cancer was regressing. She was told to have a wonderful time and check back in when she returned to Perth. Three weeks later she was found to have a 21cm tumour on her liver and many more masses on her lungs and kidneys, I think. So aggressive we can see visible growth in her abdomen day to day. The treatment for the original cancer spread cancer cells around her abdomen. We didn’t see that coming. Good one, life.

She can’t even fly home. Now we just get to watch her fade and die, the most inhumane thing I’ve ever witnessed. Torture for both the sufferer and everyone who sits by them. Bizarrely legal. Even cancerous animals are spared this horror.

It’s strangely obscene that someone who spent her working life caring for sick people now lives out her days with such high need of care, gladly given and with love in our hearts and our thoughts and interactions.

It serves as such a reminder and confirmation to me to keep our lives as chemical free as I can. ‘They’ once told us asbestos was safe too. If you do see signs of asbestos in your home, immediately call the experts for asbestos removal for residential or commercial asbestos removal services, as asbestos has been proven to cause cancer and the cause of mom’s cancer.

So, I didn’t finish blogging the Advent Book Crafts series. I guess we try again next year. I didn’t brine a turkey for tomorrow. I didn’t get to putting labels on all the home made gifts. But at least I am here, listening to the wind howling outside and the rain pumelling the conservatory roof, and the gentle snore coming from my awesome dad who does not leave my mother’s side, and the shallow, rapid breaths from her tired, worn, beaten form.