The latest…

This past week has been exhausting. Work has been weird, and when it’s been weird, it’s been busy too. I think there are major changes coming for my employer. I don’t think it will directly affect (effect? I don’t remember) my position. I think the changes will be good overall.

But, the homefront has been bad, too. Anything I can post about work, my personal health (just about better, but I think I may be getting the boy’s f****ing cold) just pales in comparison to this: When I was at the doctor’s a week ago Friday, my appointment lasted two hours (they took x-rays, etc). I called to let Gene know that I hadn’t been sold to the Gypsies or anything when he told me that my MIL was in the hospital, but he didn’t know why.

We found out that MIL is in the hospital because her doctor told her to go there. She went to the doctor because her pharamcist thought she was looking jaundiced. I think we all know it’s not good when the urgent care doctor says to get thee to the ER.

So, the deal is this: My MIL has what everyone thinks is liver cancer. Early in the week there were hopes for chemotherapy but no one has mentioned it in the past few days. Instead, everyone is talking about timeframes. My little bit of research suggested untreated liver cancer patients have about 3-4 months to live, but MIL’s oncologist is suggesting 6-12. I assume it’s really an unknown time and I don’t know where they’re getting timeframe ideas from.

I never thought I’d be so enormously heartened to hear that she has a year to live (if that makes sense to you and if it doesn’t, please keep it to yourself). If the oncologist is right, that means that she’ll live to see another birthday, maybe another Xmas. The thing that made me saddest was realizing that she’d miss my nephew’s first birthday in May. I knew that no matter what happened (barring a serious Miracle of Science) she’d never see Future Maybe Baby D’s emergence into the world, but the unfairness of her missing Nephew’s first birthday just broke my heart. So, there’s a pretty good chance that she’ll be there.

1) We haven’t told the boy yet. We will eventually, but he’s been so edgy lately that we don’t want him to worry about things he can’t solve. At some point we will take him up to OH.
2) Gene’s doing OK, as are the OH relatives. We haven’t discussed it much. He’s so much more pragmatic and logical than I am anyway, so me saying things like “It’s not fair!” really won’t do him any good. I think that when he wants to talk about it he will and in the meantime I’m just trying to keep things as normal as possible.
3) I am just so sad about this. Everyone knows that she’s made me fucking crazy in a lot of ways, but in even more ways she’s done an admirable job of welcoming me to the family, of taking what life has dealt her and really making it work for her. I really don’t know what the family is going to do when she’s gone. I think forward to that inevitable and I just can’t imagine it. I feel that she’s being robbed, that we’re being robbed of years and years of her presence. It’s not fucking fair. I love her and I take back every crappy thing I’ve ever said.