Turbo Cancer: Day 133 - October 22, 2022
Microscopic Fires
On this day, last year, my mom wrote:
Very tough day yesterday. Saw Doctor J. Will not have neck lump removed. Risk vs. reward.
Faye and Dennis and Magda came over for communion service.
Back pain severe. Couldn’t sleep. No comfy positions.
My mom had worked with Doctor J for many years. He knew my mom. He loved my mom. I do believe that, throughout her illness, he had her back. He was doing the best he could, from within the oppressive medical system, to look out for her.
Doctor J had no real power, but he always told me what questions I should ask.
We showed Doctor J the lump in my mom’s neck. I pointed out how, when she swallowed, the lump caused a jugular vein to distend. I asked him for his opinion: Was it a tumor? Was it a clot? Was there something in the vein? Was there something behind the vein? Was it a good idea to remove it? Would the procedure be simple and safe? Could we trust the surgeon, Doctor S?
Doctor J did not like the idea of removing the neck nodule. He felt that it was far too risky to cut in such close proximity to the carotid artery. Doctor S would have to be extremely steady in order to remove the lump without causing damage.
Doctor S’s hand had slipped once before. He had punctured my mom’s lung during the routine port a Cath placement.
Doctor J didn’t think that a biopsy would give us any information that would change the course of the treatment. He said that we could assume that the lump was related to the cancer, and that, moving forward, my mom’s regular scans needed to include the affected region of her neck.
I still wonder what answers the neck lump might have contained. However, my mom’s comfort and well-being were far more important than information. Besides, it might not have provided any answers at all.
My mom’s back pain was starting to make her more uncomfortable than her Lumpy pain. She had learned to adapt to Lumpy, by using positioning and pillows to rest. She couldn’t find a position that relieved the torment of her back.
She struggled. Everything was becoming more and more intense.
We assumed that her spine was misaligned due to the posture that Lumpy had forced her to adopt. Lumpy was so large and painful that, when walking from one spot to another, my mom was hunched and twisted. She held her arms out for balance, and took slow, tortured steps. She couldn’t ambulate without something, or somebody, to hold onto.
The way that her body moved made her appear less human. Her exterior had become that of a long-tortured creature. Her movements reminded me of something I had seen in a sci-fi, fantasy film.
So many things were going wrong. All at once.
That was the way of turbo cancer. The body’s immune system was rendered powerless. The doctors were powerless. The medicines and the treatments were powerless.
I do not believe that my mom’s disease was created by God.
God created human beings with intelligence and the ability to innovate. He then left us with instructions, explaining the importance of living a moral and virtuous life. Finally, he granted us the free will to choose which path we would follow.
Some felt that their ability to invent gave them God-like powers. As if they had been rebellious teenagers, they turned away from the lessons of their father. They denied the validity of morals and values. They thought that they could improve upon God’s creation.
They were blinded by their folly.
They established a new religion. They called it science. They claimed that the rational, irrationally defined as it was, outweighed the spiritual. They demanded our trust and our allegiance. They proclaimed that the righteous must follow them, abandoning God.
Those who refused to give up their ties to the spiritual world were chided, belittled, punished, and shunned. They were pushed out to the fringes of society, and the self-centered pursuit of material wealth and hedonistic pleasure became the moral foundation of the culture itself.
Life in the west became the illusion of a great party.
Our society came to believe that the purpose of our life was the attainment of constant, intoxicated joy, even if illusory or false. We began a frenzied dance, trampling on the bodies of the fallen, feverishly pursuing, otherwise unattainable, bliss.
We followed science, and science led us to Hell.
My mom had mutated pancreatic and lymphatic cells traveling, via the lymphatic system, throughout the entirety of her body. The cells were replicating and growing, unchecked. They were microscopic demons setting microscopic fires throughout her various regions, systems and organs.
The monsters that had come to inhabit my mom could not have come from God.
The doctors claimed that the chemo was working. According to them, they had the power to create miracles. According to them, my mom was a recipient of their benevolence. Looking at the numbers on the computer screen, one would be expected to celebrate the wonders of medicine. According to the oncology department, my mom was making an astonishing recovery.
I no longer trusted them, their potions, or their screens. I was looking directly at my mom. She had gotten small. She was getting scared. She was suffering too much.
There was nothing to celebrate.
And those, once microscopic, fires kept burning, growing and spreading.
Preach it, Kristi!
Let the 💔truths be known about a horrible “industry”.
Your mom would be so proud of you!
What do you trust, a computer screen with its fantasies, or life you see slipping away.
To the doctors it is reassuring, to us, a lie.