flybystardancer | Sometimes life seems to collapse around you.

(Subtitled: I Hate Cancer)

So for those who don't know... It will be 8 years next month since my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer. Fighting it has been an on-and-off thing for most of that time, but the last year has been the longest constant fight. It's also been the only time she's severely lost weight and lost her hair. She had two surgeries early on, and has been otherwise fighting tumors as they're found with chemo.

When we first started the chemo rounds a year ago, she was put on FOLFOX. Then, the second dose in, she started going into anaphylaxic shock. They managed to stop the reaction. Turns out she had become allergic to the Oxaliplatin in the mix. It was suggested that maybe they could desensitize her to it, so she saw an allergist and he wrote up orders for how to do it. They tried twice, both times in the ICU. Both times she went into shock again, with the second time much worse than the first. So that was out. They continued giving her the "FOLF" part of the mix for a while, but after her next scan it showed that those two drugs on their own weren't enough. So she was put on FOLFIRI. That didn't help either, the one tumor we were most worried about was still growing. So starting around July they did six weeks of radiation. After giving her six weeks to heal, she started taking Xeloda. (And for reference, all of these chemos are ones she's had multiple times before. In fact, FOLFOX was the very first chemo she was on.)

She wasn't doing well before the radiation. The tumor had been hurting her since October, and was getting worse. And then she was in pain after the radiation, but we were told that pain in her stomach would be normal as she healed from it.

She started eating less and less and the pain got worse and worse. Then it hit a climax a couple Sundays ago and she was taken to the ER and spent a week and a half in the hospital as things were figured out.

Turns out the pain wasn't her healing. She has a fistula that is bypassing her small intestines (so we can't be sure how much of what she's taking in is going down the proper path, and what's going through the fistula). Plus, there's something in the eating reflex that is causing the pain in her lower stomach. The doctor's can't tell what it is.

When she was released from the hospital yesterday, she signed up for their hospice program. Basically, it's a program to help us help her. There's a family member at the house with her 24/7. We have heavy-duty narcotics we're giving her, and we've been trained to give her fluid by IV. (She has a medical port, and they're leaving a needle in it so we just need to hook everything up.) She's not eating a lot, and we're not to pressure her to eat.

Mom wants to get to a point where she can do some stuff. However, the hospice nurse took my aunt and I aside today and told us that the amount she's eating isn't enough to do anything, and at this point anything she eats is like a kick in the stomach. As she eats less and less she'll sleep more and more, until the day comes where she can't even look at food.

Mom's a fighter, but today was a bad day where we were constantly chasing the pain. We got her pain-patches upped in dosage, so hopefully that will help her so she's not constantly looking at the clock for when she can have the next dose of the breakthrough drug. But still it feels like I'm losing her and I'm completely not ready for that. She's too young for her body to be falling apart on her. And I've always needed her for support but now I'm just completely falling apart when I think about what's going on with her, and I can't lean on her for support from this. And I know my family wants to help, but none of them have personalities that are actually helpful to me when I'm falling apart. And it doesn't help that to keep from falling apart I can't dwell, but today I couldn't get away from it.

They wanted me to talk to a social worker but I did, but professionals aren't helpful to me. The nature of the relationship means I can't get close and feel comfortable, and I also have never felt like one truly understood me the way friends do.

So if anyone wants to know how I'm doing, this is it.

And in a less angsty, but still disheartening note...

I was hoping to get a halloween costume done this year, mostly working on it while I was taking care of Mom. However, a week later and I'm nowhere near finished with the corset that would be the foundation for the piece. I have the pattern traced and cut out, fabric to make the final version washed and pressed... And I have no idea how to alter the fit of the corset. I know I need to do some pretty heavy alterations to make it fit me. I'm nowhere near the shape of the block the pattern company uses. And I just don't have it in me mentally do to the heavy math needed that most corset-altering tutorials use. (And I have to be in a bad state if I'm not willing to do the math... That's normally my favorite way!)

I don't know if my wanting to just give up is because of how emotionally tired I am today or what... But the costume just seems so daunting right now. After the corset I have to do the under-shirt, draft and sew the bodice, and draft and sew the skirt. And I'm not a particularly fast seamstress.