Meeting Persephone

Our phone rang last night. My mother-in-law learned that the carcinoid tumors she has in her stomach have spread to her liver. The doctor's hope is to implant the tumors in her liver with radium seeds which is supposed to be very effective - if you can afford it. The carcinoid tumors were actually the "good" news of that phone call.

We also learned last night that she has aggressive lung cancer. One year ago she had a scan and nothing was there. Yesterday she had a scan and 2 masses have shown up in one lung. One of the masses measures 10 cm. and the other is 3 cm. She will have a biopsy next week to determine what they are looking at for sure and how to treat it - again, if she can afford it. I can only feel some small sense of relief that her doctor has already offered her medical cannabis. This is something that has seemed inevitable for some time since both of her parents died of lung cancer 16 and 17 years ago and her brother was diagnosed with the same thing a year and a half ago. Inevitability doesn't lessen the shock of it all. We are all running on a sort of auto-pilot in the land of surreal right now. We are uncertain whether she wants treatment, whether she can find the money for treatment (if she does actually have to have cash up front the answer is "no"), and how treatment will work for each situation. I don't know if she has the desire to treat one thing but not the other and if she can't do both whether she will do either. Right now I know very little.

The strangest thing about all of this is her friends. Without fail the people that she thinks are closest to her seem to understand her the least. Immediately following her doctor's appointment her "best friend" asks if she wanted her to call my husband and have us come pick up the puppy we'd just bought her, trained for her, and taken to her in February after her husband passed away. The puppy is her reason for living now. She has made my husband promise her two things - 1) she doesn't want to be put in an "assisted living" home and 2) she does not want to lose her puppy. We intend to do whatever we can to prevent both.

My daughter and I may be going out to stay with her for awhile this summer if this becomes necessary. There is family there but her brother is very sick with his own lung cancer battle and my sister-in-law has already threatened her with assisted living. Our hands are usually tied because we are so far away but my husband is now the man in her life and if I need to go out there and play the bitch so that her desires can be met to the best of our ability - I will do it. She will not be put in assisted living and she will not lose that puppy. Our job - the way I see it - is to take care of those things that she feels she needs.

I don't know what else to say right now. When it rains it pours and we are all too familiar with that dynamic in this house as I'm sure many are.

So the media will have to forgive me if I don't give a shit how many more women Tiger Woods is said to have slept with.

The Trash Heap has spoken.