Cancer

About Three Weeks


I don’t know if the hospice nurse was pressed for this time frame or she told just mom, but I got a semi-frantic call from DNOS.

“Did you talk to Mom?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know? And you are coming?”

“It was a couple of hours ago and she sounded awful. Dad didn’t sound too good either, but neither of them mentioned my coming now. Why?”

“The hospice nurse told them it will be about three weeks. Mom is wiring money to C.B. I think she should just buy him the ticket though.”

Let’s step back from this conversation for a moment to note that even though she is panicking in a mild way, she still remembers, and comments, on C.B.’s tendency to not use money sent to him for its intended purpose. And I won’t argue with her assumption. If anyone could eff up the opportunity to make amends with his dying father, it would be C.B.

I point out to her that it is much harder to buy an airline ticket for someone these days because mistakes are hard to fix. It will be better to just send money. I don’t remind her that C.B. will only bring more tension to a situation already fraught and if he doesn’t get home in time, it will make things easier for the rest of us.

“So are you telling me I need to come this weekend?”

“I don’t know. Mom said she was going to call you.”

And so the lines of communication begin their inevitable breakdown. Mom and DNOS are not on the same page.

“Well, Auntie and Cousin are visiting today. They are probably still in the middle of the visit. She’ll probably call me later. I’ll talk to her regardless of whether she calls me or I have to call her.”

I then went on to explain that any decision needs to wait until after Dad sees the doctor tomorrow. The doctor appointment on Wednesday revealed that fluid is indeed building up again and Dad mentioned to the nurse today he is feeling pressure on his chest. The likely scenario is that the doctor will suggest draining the build up or simply letting the cancer run its course. Whatever Dad decides. This will decide things for me too.

DNOS didn’t have much to say after that especially when I pointed out to her that I couldn’t come and hang out for weeks on end. I have a husband and child and even though they would survive without me, it is too long to be away given the stressful nature of everything. Rob, BabyD and I are still raw from our earlier losses. We worry too much about each other as it is. Throw distance in and the recipe is ripe for disaster.

This was not what DNOS expected to hear. She also did not expect me to ask her if she was really prepared for what is coming. It’s not easy to watch someone die. Dad’s death is not a hypothetical in the far future thing. It’s here.

Later I spoke with my mother, she had questioned the hospice intake nurse about the time frame. Wednesday Dad’s doctor took him off all his medications including the blood thinner which has essentially kept him from having any further strokes these last two and a half years. That has been running through her mind and today it occurred to her that this was done because Dad didn’t have much time left. Time that could be measured by weeks instead of months.

Mom was surprised though to hear about DNOS’s call to me. I was not surprised to learn that communication from now on was going to resemble a game of telephone.

The bottom line is that I don’t need to go right now.

But that time is coming much sooner than I had originally guessed and I guessed shorter than three months to begin with.

A Drink a Day Brings Breast Cancer your Way


Judith Timson at the Globe and Mail penned an opinion piece about the latest breast cancer worry for women. A study has found that women who drink daily are more likely to suffer from breast cancer. Add this to the other risk elevators, some proven like taking HRT’s and others speculated like high fat diets, lack of exercise, not breast-feeding your babies or having those infants late in life or not at all. One of the things I found interesting is the tendency to downplay the cancer risks that are more out of our control than our heredity and that is the effect of pollution. I started thinking about this recently while reading the Devra Davis books, When Smoke Ran like Water and The Secret History of the War on Cancer. Both books are fascinating in that they detail studies and events dating back to the early part of the last century that clearly show that many of the chemicals and pollutant by-products that we absorb, drink, eat and breathe in daily have been known to cause cancer by the companies that make and use them and by the United States government. In the first book there are two chapters, one detailing Bella Azbug’s call to the war on breast cancer and the other discussing known risks to the male reproductive system that should lay to rest the idea that men and women can do much to prevent themselves from becoming cancer victims. 

Bisphenol A, in the news lately due to Canada’s possible ban, is one of those supposedly benign modern wonders that has infiltrated daily existence at what we have come to discover is our own core levels. We should exercise, eat healthy and lean and just say no to alcohol, but how do we avoid plastics? How do we keep ourselves and our children safe from genetic damage that we inherited from our own parents?

If you have the time and inclination, I recommend checking out Ms. Davis’s books. Readable, fascinating and horrifying, they are eye-opening to facts about the effects of modern life on our bodies at levels not detectable until it’s too late and about how companies and the government have known all along yet chose to ignore the evidence in the name of profit and for the good of the economy. The economy, after all, is why the United States exists, right?