For Just A Few Moments

And life with a loved one with cancer goes on. GaGa has started a new medication and she has responded to it, so her paranoid thoughts have seemed to dissapate. We are back to "normal" and she can dial a phone again and call when she is in distress.

GaGa calls, looking to me for the answers and this... is...

uncomfortable.

She has been in denial of the cancer from the very beginning. I've never even heard her say the word so I stopped saying it. She has been told she has cancer many times over by her oncologist and by George and we have now hit the year mark of her diagnosis. Her mantra is always to want to go back to the doctor to find out why she has this pain on her side. She has been saying this every week, several times a week for close to two years. I finally realized the denial no matter how frustrating to me, who is currently diving really deep into my own muck and faulty thinking, has kept her alive. I just happen to be hypersensitive to inauthenticity right now. My meter is high. My learning curve is that not only do I have to accept myself for who I am, I have to accept others...

where

they

are.

Heh, heh, heh.

On a regular basis, GaGa looks to me for answers and in the past, we have gone round and round with what she is saying for me to try to get to the bottom of it. It never makes any sense. Even when I try to repeat back to her what she has JUST said to me, that gets denied. Last week, after a conversation that went round and round, I told her I was confused. I asked are you confused? And she said yes. If you boil it all the way down, through all of her muck, which is very deep, it is that she is scared, confused and in some amount of pain. She doesn't understand what is happening to her or why. I don't have any answers for that. I can't help her not feel pain, anxiety or sadness and I was trying to do that for a long while. There are no answers for why she has cancer and her life has taken a miserable turn.

She asked again to see the doctor, I told her the doctor can't do anything, that she can only take pain medication to keep her as comfortable as possible. And then this is what broke my heart. She finally said okay. I am the parent. She is the child. This is a sucky place to be.

I went to visit her on Friday and she was very calm, coherent and non demanding. This has not been the case for months. I told a story about the girls, and she laughed and that hasn't happened for a while. She had visited with the Hospice Nurse who had told her the same things I did and she used the C-word. GaGa relates that Susie says the pain is the Padget's disease and the cancer. That is the first time I have ever heard the word cancer come out of GaGa's mouth. For this moment in time, she is accepting of cancer and she seems at peace. I don't know how long this will stick but I will remember this moment. Acceptance, even when life brings you misery, pain, and uncertainty, acceptance of these circumstances, brings a sense of peace,

even if for just a few moments.