Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Monica Salcedo (Monicks) on December 9, 2009 at 11:07am

Words fail me when trying to express on how many levels your story affects me, and how moved I am by it. Let me put it this way, I have lost two generations of relatives to cancer.

My father had the cancerous mass on his brain too, by the time we found out, it had spread all over his brain, wasn’t operable; my mom and I (as I am an only child) helped my dad go through all the terrible symptoms, the pain, the dizziness, he was hungry all the time no matter the amount of food he ate, the part of the brain that controls hunger was affected; then dementia, we’re talking really crazy here, crazy like he wanted to strangle people, the bleeding due to steroids. The blindness came near the end… it was a terrible experience. Then he went into comma and a week later he passed away. He was only 46 years old.

I know it’s hard, and we will never stop missing our departed loved ones but I can tell you this:

Even though this is a terrible illness, and all the deal of pain it brings to the sick person and the people around them seems unbearable at times, these announced deaths give the sick person the chance to receive all the love and attention and kind gestures and a whole lot of wonderful things that otherwise they wouldn’t get to experience.

Given that we had a very good life as a family, consider that I do not exaggerate when I tell you that I think that during those ten weeks my dad had the most epic demonstrations of love, affection, respect, admiration, gratefulness... not only from our relatives, but from many, many people that we would have never thought had loved him that much.

And that, my dear friend, is what I can tell you, because I find a great deal of comfort in this fact.

Permalink Reply by Larry Carter Center on December 18, 2009 at 12:12am

I lost a brother in law to brain cancer. As a veteran with full 20 year benefits and a school district employee, he was not fucked around by insurance companies and his tumors were removed. However it left him very child like and his last six months of life were degenerative with strokes, less and less mobility. I think chemo therapy killed him, making him very sick, little kid brain personalities do not like puking up guts upon guts. The cancers metastasized. Advancing into lungs and pancreas, he lost weight from a 200 pound 6 foot tall man to a waif of 130 pounds and stooped to 5'9".... Hospice helped my mother too, providing pain relief from massive spreading ovarian cancer. A dear friend is losing his mom to the same cancer right now. I only hope that people can spend time with their loved ones and share memories, pass on stories from out elders and their elders. Be at peace and have closure with disease. However I feel compelled to blame pollution for the cancers. Can we not biopsi and preserve tissue samples of tumors to find the traces of pollutants that establish a link between air, water or soil contact with such carcinogens into our bodies? I'm not inclined to blame diet, too much sugar or too much beer, unless said consumption is contaminated. How do other feel about the science of dying and making our lost lives count for something of proving how or what kills us?

Permalink Reply by Wendy R. Dragon on July 6, 2011 at 9:34am

Dan, I am sorry to hear about your mom.

 I lost my mom in Sept. of 2003 to pancreatic cancer, and the doctor's reaction was much the same, they kept telling her her symptoms were nothing, until it was too late to do anything. It seems like the fear of death in this culture is so great that even doctors avoid dealing with it until they absolutely have to. :o(