Turbo Cancer: Day 131 - October 20, 2022
I Came Back
On this day, last year, my mom wrote:
Yesterday- lots of constipation and back pain. Nice birthday party for Penny with Eva. Penny gets me. ❤️
Today more barium, cat scan and tumor marker. I feel like I’m starting to lose this battle. I expect bad news.
I will never forget the look on my mom’s face when I entered her house. I was back from San Francisco, and she was relieved. It was that same look that young children have when their parents finally return, after a long, stressful day at school. I ran to my mom and I hugged her.
I said: ”Don’t worry, I came back. I’ll always come back.”
I asked her how she was feeling. She said she was ok.
Until reading my mom’s journal, I didn’t know that she was struggling so much during this time. She hadn’t told me about her severe constipation or back pain. She didn’t say how bad it actually was. I suppose she didn’t want me to know. She was empathetic to my struggles, and didn’t want to add to my burden.
At this point, we assumed that the back pain was related to the constipation. It was an endless cycle. My mom was in unbearable pain. So, she took opioids. The opioids caused constipation. The constipation caused more pain. Because of the pain, my mom took more opioids.
No matter how many milligrams she took, she was still in pain.
We are told that these pharmaceutical miracles will erase all of our discomfort and discontent. We are told that there is some magical drink, pill or injection that will take all of our problems away. We are told that we can live a life of comfort and ease, void of pain and suffering. Obviously, this is all marketing, advertising and propaganda. It is all lies.
Believing in lies has led to the downfall of humanity.
There is nothing on this earth that will protect us from sickness, pain and torment. We cannot cheat death. No human can create an antidote to the hardships of life.
Trauma is coming. Suffering is coming. Death is coming. One way or another.
Hardship is a part of living, and we are here to live.
Life is not meant to be easy. It is the hard stuff, the torturous stuff, that forces us to develop and grow. I lived through tragedy, and I came out deeply hurt - but I came out enlightened.
My mom took opioids in an attempt to relieve herself of physical pain. My son took opioids in an attempt to relieve himself of mental and spiritual pain. There is not much difference between the two. In both cases, it didn’t work.
On this day, my mom had to drink large amounts of chalky barium, which she hated. She then had to lie flat on her back on a hard table, for her scan, which was unbearable. She did this so that the doctors could look at the numbers on the computer screen. They would look at the numbers, and tell us whether the chemo was working.
The palliative chemo. The chemo that was meant to relieve pain.
In retrospect, the whole thing was just so stupid. My mom was in unimaginable, unmanageable pain. Clearly, no treatment was working. Not one thing that the medical system did to my mom successfully provided the promised pain relief.
Too bad they didn’t offer a money-back guarantee.
My mom was going through the motions. She was doing this for all of us. She continued down the path of treatment, so that her family could have hope to hold onto.
Nevertheless, she could feel it in her body, and she could feel it in her soul. She was losing the battle.
“Believing in the lie has led to the downfall of humanity.”
I agree. As I was first reading, a song “Entangled” came to my mind:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eMNO3gjOVHM&si=nnXjbZjnOI183HpU
My father did not survive his booster. He had otherwise relatively good care at VA Home. Entangled.
Keep writing.
Keep reflecting.
You are expressing what maybe millions now may be ruminating.