April 9, 2004
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The following excerpt comes from a post on a web bulletin board that is focused on Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I have been waiting for permission to post this on this Xanga site, not knowing that Lou was on a vacation. The timing of her return and granting of permission could not have been timed better given the reflections of my last blog and a recent blog by Lovingmy40′s
…The funny thing is its probably not cancer that is going to kill me!
I have stage Iv adenocarcinoma that has spread to my liver very badly, so it is prob liver failure that will sign on the dotted line when collecting me for eternel sleep!
I am gutted, but I have to say if I come across as non-caring or very abrupt please know I am not, its just the way I am. I was always the joker and will continue to be, hell this thing is taking my life, it aint getting anything else from me!
I have in a strange way become at peace with is what is happening to me and what is going to happen. My main concerns now are for my family.
The one thing that I cry over a million times a day above anything else, is the fact that people around me think I am giving up. I was never a quitter, I feel let down that they do not know this, they should know me. I have refused chemo for my symptons and in the hope it will buy me some more time.So in some people’s eyes I am a quitter.
I ask these people, have you seen my son? do you see how beautiful he is? how young he is? do you NOT think if I had a figthing chance with this, that I would not try? I have refused because I do not want to give people around me false hope, hell they see me taking a tablet, or a shot, that may be the one that works right?? WRONG.
I am going to die, why would these people ask me to spend the precious time I do have to spend with them as the person I am for as long as I can, having stuff that may, just may buy me another week or month if am lucky. With that week or month also comes the side effects on top of everything else. I do not want it. sorry.
Thats me being selfish thats me being Louise. Sorry all for that rant.
I look at everyone else you know out the window, in the car park, on the tv, and I feel like they are in a club they I have been ejected from. I am no longer a part of the elite club of life. They go on,everything is normal for them, and I want to scream HEY WHY DID YOU KICK ME OUT?
But you know what? I like my club too! I have gotten to know stuff about people I love that I would never of known if this had not happened, I have learnt that every day should be filled with at least one heartfelt laugh from the belly! I have also learnt that my son will know me now as the perfect mum, I can tell you I never was. You know as a typical parent, sometimes you would have impatience, sometimes mad because you nearly broke your neck on a stray football! But now I truly truly appreicate my family and I will be a better person for doing so, so in turn will I will be a better person for them in their hearts and for them when they look back. Does that make sense? Its hard finding the words.
Oh another good thing about this club,is that who do you know can say that fancy ice cream at 4 am and people go get it for you!!! I could say what direction I want my coffee stirred in and people would do it, they are sweet and they love me, for that I am blessed.
Ok so the point of my post is after that massive ramble is THANK YOU for understanding, Thankyou for listening and Thank you for being the most decent bunch of folks I have come across in a long while.
Love always.
Lou.
Comments (6)
Funny how ‘tragedy’ can come with ‘blessings,’ isn’t it? I have no words… but thank you.
~Paloma
Oh, god. Oh, god.
No words on this one. But much heartfelt love, for her, and you, and all who’ve taken an unexpected shortcut toward the path everyone eventually walks.
I love and admire her attitude. A true warrior among whiners.
I watched my neighbor die of metastatic liver cancer. Stopped to visit him one night and yelled downstairs… “are you decent?”
The reply… “define decent.”
My response, “You’re not naked are you?”
“no…not yet…but come on down.”
Bwahahahaa…he was a great guy. Laughed till the end he did…because, as we know…there’s a fear that if we start to cry it just won’t stop and that’s just more time we’ll have lost to something that won’t fix a damned thing.
Please send Lou my regards…
My mother and her sister both died of lung cancer.
My aunt was diagnosed in 1990, had one lung removed and refused chemotherapy. She was given 6 months to live. She died in October, 14 years after her diagnosis.
My mom was diagnosed in December of 1999 and also given 6 months to live but chose to undergo radiation and chemo. She did well the first year and a year later the tumor was growing again. Last summer she chose to undergo a new chemo and it sapped her of all her strength. She lived three years post-diagnosis.
The difference between my mother and her younger sister’s attitude towards their cancer and impending death was striking. My mother believed she could recover and if she didn’t accept treatment she would, as Lou states above, be giving up. The mental anguish she suffered in not accepting her condition was the hardest part for me to witness. Towards the end, as the ever growing tumor engulfed her heart and she struggled to breathe, she would beg God not to take her just yet, even though she couldn’t even get out of her chair unnassisted.
My aunt, on the other hand, accepted that she would die eventually and decided that she would live her life to the fullest in whatever time she had left. From what I could tell, she didn’t suffer nearly as much as my mother did. I saw her six weeks before she died and I had no idea she was sick again. She was relaxed, content and at peace.
A year ago my uncle was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer and I went with my dad to visit him in the hospital. The first thing my dad said to him was, “We all have to take our turn, don’t we?” My uncle laughed heartily and agreed. He died six weeks later.
I applaud Lou for her courage. To know you will die when everyone else around you appears to go on living is perhaps the ultimate test of faith.
But none of us are truly immortal in the physical sense, are we? Perhaps immortality is not the name on the headstone, but the mark we make on the people we have known, by living on in their memory after we die.
Oh, was that an impressive letter! Thanks for sharing. When my wife Marvis was dying of cancer after a futile course of chemo and then radiation, I first understood the meaning of courage. And then, less than two years ago, when my dear friend Fran confided in us that she had incurable cancer and was refusing any more chemo, I sure as hell understood, and my duty as a friend was to be supportive of whatever decision she made. She died last June. Sometimes, you just can’t buy a happy ending. But …you can turn every ending into a happy one if you look at it the right way.