Sunday, July 12, 2009

Mom and Me

My mother is in rehab now. She had surgery about a week ago and is already up, walking (with help), and dealing with her granddaughter’s death about as well as can be expected.

I call her on the phone a couple of times a day. I wish I could get up there, but I’m too sick from the chemo. Yesterday, when I called and asked for mom, a nurse told me she was in the beauty parlor. For reasons that have nothing at all to do with beauty, that was the best news I’d had in while.

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Not surprisingly, I’ve been getting some psychiatric and psychological help for about a year now. It was recommended by one of my chemotherapy nurses after I spent a long chemo session talking about my feelings.

The psychiatrist, whom I really like and admire, doesn’t have me stretch out on a couch or anything like that. We talk for a bit and he makes comments, but he’s really more involved in prescribing drugs than in anything like psychotherapy, and that’s okay with me.

I was in therapy once, for one session. The doctor made a big deal out of telling me I could tell him anything at all and it wouldn’t bother him, and that sounded good to me. So I told him something. I don’t remember what it was (this was about 40 years ago) but it must have been pretty bad because when I looked at the shrink his face was twisted with disgust.

So much for that.

This may come as a surprise to most who know me, but I’m not crazy, or not really crazy. I don’t want to take my own life or harm anybody else, I don’t hear voices, and I have no ideas at all that I am Napoleon or Captain Hook or Al Capone.

I guess that means I don’t really need to see a shrink. What I do need is help dealing with the things are happening in my life, to me and – even more – to people I love. I am sad and sometimes scared. I’m angry. I can’t sleep without aid. I have no energy to speak of. My memory is full of troublesome holes. But I’m not crazy.

That’s where Linda comes in. I call her my therapist though the VA gives her some other title.
She and I have a good relationship. I see her at least twice a month and I am able to tell her the truth without worrying about her judgments. We like each other. She’s helped me accept the truth and know that my feelings are to be expected and are justified.

I saw her last week and when I told her about my mother’s hospitalization and my niece’s suicide she didn’t hide her reaction or retain her professional detachment. She blurted a short sentence that you might expect to hear from a carpenter after he hammers his thumb.

I started to weep, something I’ve been doing a lot of in the last few days. She simply let me cry. And that was okay. I told her what I was feeling and she nodded and she said, "Of course you’re sad and frightened and angry. You should be."

She also told me I needed to focus more on myself. I know the truth of that. I have to take care of myself.

I’m not trying to sound like a candidate for sainthood. But she’s right. I haven’t been thinking about myself…at least not as much as I usually do. "Be nice to yourself," Linda said.

To be honest, right now there aren’t many ways I can be nice to myself. I’ve no appetite to speak of. I don't drink anymore. I can’t go sailing or walking. My libido has left town.

But I can read.

So I went online and ordered two of Garrison Keillor’s books – the only ones I didn’t already have in the stack by my bed.

The books arrived yesterday and I’ve already devoured one. It was wonderful to spend time in Lake Woebegon instead of in my own head.

Friday, July 3, 2009

The Worst Year Ever

I’m going to say it started 12 months ago. That might not be correct. It may have been 13 months or maybe just 51 weeks or so. To keep things simple, I put the beginning at a year ago. I mean the beginning of the worst year ever.

I have cancer, of course. Terminal cancer. And I’ve had it longer than a year. About two-and-a-half years would be correct. It’s not surprising that the cancer is much worse now that I’ve been ill as long as I have. I get chemotherapy pretty regularly and it’s as bad as you’ve heard. That, too, has gotten worse in the last year.

Then there’s my brother, my older brother, Kevin. He had a stroke this last year. A one-time football player and a long-distance bike rider, he’s now stuck in a wheel chair, barely able to stand, unable to use his right arm. His dental practice? Kaput. My kid brother had cancer, now in remission. Lynne was ill, in and out of hospital several times. And now my mother's in the hospital with a broken hip and some strange mental condition that makes it impossible for her to clearly verbalize her thoughts.



This was exactly how far I’d written in this blog/journal entry a couple of days ago when my phone rang. It was my niece, my kid brother's daughter, calling from Clearwater. At first I thought she was calling about my mother. She wasn’t. She called to tell me that another of my nieces, Monica, had visited my mom for several hours, left my mother’s room to go to mom’s house, where she, Monica, was staying. Everything seemed fine. It wasn’t. For some reason I guess we’ll never know, Monica – an attorney, a beautiful young woman, smart and funny, much loved by her family – went into my mother’s bathroom and hanged herself.

What can I say or write? I feel terrible for my big brother, Kevin, and for Monica’s mother Mary Anne and her stepmother, Roz. I feel terrible for Monica’s brothers and sisters and cousins. I tremble at the thought of what this horrible news will do to my mother and am only writing this because I know she has no access to this blog.

I want to curse. I try to pray and I can’t except to tell my Higher Power that I’ve had enough, the family has had enough, leave us alone, please!

I talked to a priest yesterday, Father Bob. He went to Jesuit High School in Tampa with me and now serves at my mother’s parish. He said that his belief was that when someone took her own life, she was saying: "God, I’m in so much pain and trouble I simply can’t take it any more. I’m turning it over to you." That terrible last act, then, becomes a sort of prayer. Maybe someday that thought will really help. I can see how it could. For now, it doesn’t. I’m sad, terribly sad, and confused and frightened and angry that my niece, that wonderful girl I held on my lap and loved and whom my mom loved almost beyond belief, would do this miserable thing apparently without thought or care of what it could do to my mother, her grandmother and the rest of her family.

What I thought was the worst year of my life when I started this blog, became, in an instant, immeasurably worse.

I like to act as if I discover lessons in the situations I face. Lessons that teach me, and perhaps you, something about life or death or love or family or something worth thinking about. There’s no lesson here. None. None at all.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

MJ and DI

My mother got out of the hospital last Friday (June 26), went home and broke her hip on Saturday. She somehow survived Sunday but was back in the hospital on Monday. She had surgery today (July 1) and somehow expects to be walking within a week.

At least that’s the news I got from my mother and my brother up in Clearwater. I never heard of anything like that, but, hey, it sounds good to me.

I had chemo this morning. It wasn’t bad but early in the drive home my tight lower lip went completely numb. It only took an instant for the lip to go from being normal to tingling, as if I’d been given a big pain-killer shot in a dentist’s office.

I know I should have turned back to the hospital, but I didn’t. I just wanted to go home.

I know it wasn’t the right thing to do. It worked out though. Not long after I walked into the apartment, the lip felt fine.

So far, so good. Mom seems to be okay and I’m here.

Meanwhile, I wish everybody would stop talking about Michael Jackson, his money, his DNA, his drug habit, and everything else.

I feel bad for Farrah Fawcett Major’s loved ones and followers. Thanks to The King of Pop, her passing has hardly been noticed.

The same thing happened to Mother Theresa (now Blessed Theresa of Calcutta) after her death in 1997. Diana, the Princess of Wales, died just a few days earlier and news of her passing in a brutal auto accident in Paris put the Roman Catholic nun at the back of most newspapers.

I don't know why, but this stuff bothers me. In a way, though, I enjoy it. It takes my mind off me and my mom for a bit and gives me something new to complain about.