Cancer is a Piece of Shit

There are so many months that have a cancer awareness associated with it, but I think that October is notoriously the one month that everyone is really aware of. Pink this. Pink that. Fight like a girl. Fuck cancer. Save the tatas. Etc. Etc. Etc.

I sat in my hematologist's office recently, which is also the oncologist's office that my mom treated with, and saw this poem "What Cancer Cannot Do" by Dr. Robert L. Lynn. Cancer can't shatter hope, faith, peace, love, friendship, courage.... It took every single ounce of my being to not get up off the table, take that picture up off the wall and punt it clear down the hallway. What a fucking joke. Cancer is cancer. It erodes, it destroys, it metastases', it ruins everything, every time, every day. Yeah, yeah, I can hear what you're thinking now. "Wow, way to be positive Kelli". And all I can say in rebuttal is "Cancer is a giant pile of steaming shit. Period.

My mom's fight was long and hard. Including her time in remission, she was in some stage or another of breast cancer for over 10 years. Cancer brought my sister, my mom and I closer together, but it destroyed us. Cancer made us learn how tough we are but kept knocking us down over and over. Cancer took and it took and it took and it took until the only thing left to take was MY MOM'S LIFE. If that doesn't get you wanting to punt the "What Cancer Cannot Do" picture down the hallway too, maybe I'm just still bitter or maybe you haven't had a chance to see the strongest person in the entire world fight for their life yet.

A car accident started us on that stupid, pink, cancer filled journey. You heard right. My mom was t-boned one night and taken by ambulance to the emergency room. Doctors in the ER were concerned with her x-rays and CT scans that they had done to check her sternum from the accident. They told her to not wait and to follow-up with her gynecologist asap. She did. Tests, mammograms and biopsies later it was confirmed.... breast cancer. But, only in one breast and some lymph nodes and looks to be pretty stable, should be a good outcome, maybe Stage 1, mayyyyybe 2. Surgery came and went and we were told the cancer was much worse and was actually a very aggressive form. Surgery just a few days later for total mastectomy came and went. Chemotherapy started... man, that shit is ROUGH. The first four treatments are called the "Red Devil" and let me tell you, it really is red and it really is the devil. It looks like bright red Kool-Aid going in and it's such a strong drug that my mom had to eat ice chips throughout the course of it being delivered because it could instantly.... yes, INSTANTLY cause mouth ulcers. The last four treatments weren't as tough, but for God's sake, how could they be after the first four?! Then came a month of radiation. Loss of hair, loss of self-esteem (hair loss, boob loss, etc really gets ya down), nausea, weight loss (when you're only 120-ish pounds when you start this journey, every pound matters), vomiting, not being able to bathe yourself, going in after every treatment for a shot to boost your white blood cell count and it burns so bad it brings you to tears, ports, pokes, tests, hepatizations, blood clots, the list really does go on and on and on. But then, finally, a clear scan. REMISSION. We celebrated and lived and thanked God and danced and were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Fast forward to just over five years later. Small lump over my mom's clavicle. Her surgeon knew right away the cancer was back. They did a biopsy to confirm and yep, the bitch was back. Cancer was back. Now before the battle starts up again, in these five years, my mom developed congestive heart failure from the red devil, so there were battles during that time as well. To save your life, you risk a lot.

Her breast cancer had metastases in her lungs and the pleura of her lungs as well as the actual fluid itself. And adding in the above heart issues, we had a long road of chest issues. This stage of treatment was hard because it wasn't actual treatment. Just palliative care and that's a really hard pill to swallow. So there was chemo, oral drugs, etc but they just "helped" to slow the growth and to "help" minimize side effects (fluid retention in the heart and lungs, etc). This chemo is supposed to be a low dose with very minimal side effects. But my mom lost her hair, was super ill, and even lost her fingernails. She couldn't even button her pants, use a zipper, open most containers, because you really do use your fingernails a lot more than your realize until they're GONE. The chemo damaged her tear ducts and she would just "cry" (but without actually crying) all the time. The tears just flowed constantly, but she wasn't crying, crying. Her voice faded. She was on oxygen 24/7.

My mom kept working until she couldn't. She lived on her own until she couldn't. She drove until she couldn't. She fought until she couldn't. WE fought until she couldn't. She was weak, barely able to stand, couldn't get off the toilet, out of the bathtub, down the two front steps in our house, etc without help. Regardless of the drains, procedures to introduce talc into the pleura space, and a pericardial window, to allow excess fluids to drain, the fluid kept coming. It's like being suffocated. You can't lay down, bend over, shit, really even talk without it taking over. The last night at home, I sat in her room and we talked a lot. She told me she was done, but didn't want me and my sister to think she was a quitter. It was the hardest thing to tell her that it was okay to rest now. That she had fought the hardest thing anyone should ever have to fight. I put her socks on her feet and got her her water so she could try and sleep in her chair. The next morning we went to the oncologist's office and that was it. No more chemo, no more pills, no more.

The final hospital stay came. Visitors came. Then we moved to hospice. More visitors came. The final Saturday she told us she wanted to say good-bye to each kid and spend time with them individually. We followed her wishes. Later when the kids had gone she told us that she didn't think she had much longer. We stayed by her side and that night was a rough night but she went to sleep and she stayed there until she passed that Monday. She went out her way. She truly rested and she deserved it. She was literally the toughest human you would've ever met.

So regardless of what Dr. Robert Lynn decided to put in a poem about what cancer cannot do, I'm telling you it's a bunch of shit. Cancer absolutely does everything he says it doesn't. It can bring your together, make you renew your faith, but it destroys you too. Six years later and I'm still destroyed. I don't know if I ever will be the same. It slowly, methodically, mercilessly and angrily destroyed my mom. So, yeah, I'm bitter. I hate cancer. It's a piece of shit. It sucks. It took my mom. It took my kids' grandma. I hate it. I hate your poem Dr. Lynn. And fuck cancer. This month, every month, all the time.