Cancer everywhere

Written by Gerard on Wednesday 16 December 2009

Let's come straight out and say it: Lisa's mother has been diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer. The events that led up to this have been unfolding over the past month, and a fairly concrete diagnosis came something over a week or a fortnight ago.

Lisa, naturally, was devastated. She didn't help herself much by doing some web research into the survival rates and details of the disease. Seems Ovarian Cancer is dubbed the 'silent killer'...

I can only speak for myself here, of course, but the notion of Lisa and I losing one parent each over the last year was hellish. And having come out one end of a cycle of hospitals, funerals and family complications, the thought of another? I just felt numb, to be honest.

The aftermath of my own father dying hasn't been a pretty picture. My mother and younger sister are drowining in guilt and grief. My other sister did some fairly horrible things too, including stealing money and documents when we were sorting out the will. And as I devoted myself to my father during his hospital stay, our business suffered.

It's funny that the tables are turned this time though. I've tried to be as useful as possible around the house while Lisa has made herself available to her mother for moral support and more. I think we both understand that it has to be this way.

Luckily, the latest consult seems to suggest that Lisa's mother detected this cancer really early. Each subsequent consult with a new doctor seems to downplay the extent of the spread. It may be a reasonably straightforward operation followed by some chemotherapy. In other words, no-one's suggesting this is a terminal case.

How to describe the prospect of another cancer fight? Enormously unsettling. I've seen first hand the damage that bereavement did to our family - to the point where I barely want to speak to my mother on the phone. People don't react in a predictable fashion when they're scared and/or grieving: some bury their heads, others want to be left alone, others try to turn it into their drama.

Hopefully what's going on with my mother-in-law will work out well. Strangely, when my father died, my in-laws seemed more attuned to the fact that I was suffering than my own family. It's horrible to see them going through this so soon after my dad.