by harmsalmon » Thu Jul 10, 2014 11:35 pm
so I'm going to talk about this here because I have pretty much no one I can talk to about it irl. sad, I know. anyway. a little background first; basically, my stepmom was diagnosed w breast cancer almost a year ago. her and my dad are extremely religious (new-age fundamentalist christian yuppies) and pretty much decided that they would treat her (at the time, only stage 1) breast cancer with only "alternative medicine."
now, I'm all for doing what you can to avoid the horrors of chemo/radiation therapy, organic hippy-granola whatever-the-fuck-you-want-to-do. but, like most sane people, I also believe that this is useful in a balance with traditional, more scientific-advancement-based treatments. my stepmom, on the other hand, did not; spurred on by her equally-delusional "dietary therapist" sister, she decided to fight her (at this point, still very easily treatable) breast cancer armed solely with the power of an all-plant-food diet and prayer, in the process also dragging my easily-manipulated dad, her three year old son (my half brother) and my brother and I along with her. a few months into this, I began to suffer from health issues, which my doctor determined to be from the lack of bean energy and other nutrients in the meat-less carbohydrate-less gluten-less everything else-less household. this caused me to ultimately miss over three weeks of school due to a mutant sinus infection and saw a significant drop in my grades as a result of absences and apparent physical incompatibility the diet had with my already-deathly-thin and often-sickly state (but that's all a different story).
I figured that once her cancer began to worsen (it did), she and my dad may see the sense in at least considering a biopsy or some other more-practical, less-invasive treatment. nope. over the past few months we have seen her switch to an even stricter diet which necessitates her daily intake to consist of solely spinach salads and sweet potatoes, with the occasional water binge. she also had begun to look very unhealthily thin (she was already a rail) and her excess skin began to droop off of her face. she began to look like death in every sense of the phrase.
and now, over the past week or so, she has started to experience back pain which has essentially rendered her immobile. she has had to take two weeks off work (a brave move, considering my dad is recently unemployed and has been unable to hold a job for longer than three months for as long as I can remember) and has been unable to make her usual weekly visits to a massage therapist, chiropractor, and acupuncturist. tomorrow she is going in for an MRI to see if this is the result of the cancer metastasizing in the bones in her back, which is apparently a common occurrence with people with extremely life-threatening breast cancer. basically, even people who have been using traditional treatments who this happens to die within a month or so. while I am not especially close to her, I obviously care about her and have been hoping and praying to every deity and otherworldly power I can think of that it's just a slipped disk or something. but at this point, that seems too unlikely.
not only that, but I am even more upset by how, at the risk of sounding harsh, selfish this is of her. she has a three year old son and a husband who cannot support him. not to mention my brother and I, her stepsons, who by proxy have even gotten our mother and her partner emotionally involved. I have talked with her and my father several times about how worried I am for her and how obvious it has rapidly become to a sort of-outsider's perspective that this treatment, plain and simple, isn't working. I can't even begin to describe how I feel. I am scared. I am worried. I am beyond frustrated and angry and fearful for her future and that of my whole family.
I don't really know what I'm looking for here. obviously there's really nothing I can do at this point but that's pretty hard to accept to say the least in this situation, and not to mention with an anxiety disorder or so to boot. I guess I just need an outlet because I am emotionally completely fucking spent. I'm having a hard time talking to anyone and I'm considering calling in sick for work this weekend. I'm at my mom's house right now and I will probably not go over to my dad's tomorrow because I genuinely don't know if I can handle being around them.
if you read all of this, thanks. I really honestly appreciate it.
-- Sam