A No-Win Scenario

I've been meaning to write this for months but more things keep happening. My dad went into the hospital on labor day with problems. Long story short, they discovered colon cancer. A two-foot section of colon was removed as well as the lymph nodes. Lesions were found on his liver. The lymph nodes and liver were biopsied and tested positive. Dad's condition is getting worse every day. He's dying. Today was our first visit from Hospice.

A family friend who is a gastroenterologist had been telling Dad for years to get a colonoscopy. He never wanted to. This could have been discovered a very long time ago when something could have been done about it. He had already beat prostate cancer and a bump on the head which put him into a coma for a week. He seemed indestructible. I was convinced that he'd live to 100. But, nobody is indestructible.

I'm preaching here, and I don't care. I've had two colonoscopies already. They are inconvenient as fuck, but there is no good excuse not to get one. When your doctor tells you that it's time for one, he's not doing it to torturer you, it will literally save your life. Just fucking do it.

Addendum: Another one of my mom's sister past away suddenly in her sleep two days less than a month after her first sister passed. This is too much for the family to go through, and, I'm at my wit's end now.

Memento Mori

So, one of my Aunts died last week. She was my my mother's youngest sister. She went to take a nap and stopped breathing. Her friend, who is useless in a crisis called my mother before calling emergency services. When I got to the apartment with my mother, we were there about just before the police and 20 or 40 minutes after she had stopped breathing. I spent some time working, along with my father,  in for a funeral home, and so, I noticed that lividity was already setting in. Her friend was on the phone the emergence operator who told us to start CPR. I made him get her off the bed and on to the floor. I let my CPR certification lapse 10 years ago, and I was so nervous about not knowing what I was doing that I was freezing up. I was about to begin comprehensions when the police came in with the fire department and EMTs and paramedics on their heels. The professionals worked on her and pumped her so full of drugs that a slight pulse began. This is when they brought her to the hospital.

I had to leave the hospital and fetch my aunt's living will. When I got back to the ER, her EKG was flatlined, but there was a machine breathing for her. As per directions, the doctor took her off the life support with two sisters, a brother-in-law, a nephew and a friend present. She was suffering with Parkinson's and was in a lot of physical pain for two I am grateful that at least she went to sleep in her own bed in her own home and didn't wake up.

My aunt was an atheist, so we had a nice no-denominational memorial service at the funeral home, the one that my family is familiar with. Extended family, professional friends, and members of her book club were in attendance. Many people stood up to speak and had many lovely words about her. She was personally and professionally admired by so many people that it made me glad. It was a fine service, until the very end when things blew up.

This isn't not the place to go into details, or to try to assign blame. I don't know who is reading this blog. A huge row ensued inside the funeral home over my aunt's ashes. I had to step in physically, like a hockey referee, between one of my aunt's daughters (the one not currently living overseas) and one of my mother's other sisters, to keep them from coming to blows. Language that should not be uttered in a funeral home was used. It was all so white trash, so Real Housewives of New Jersey, that it was embarrassing. My mother, the matriarch of the family was besides herself. Seething, I roared at everyone to stop. After the repast, I called the funeral director's cell phone and personally apologized for my family.

Today, I pinpointed exactly where the confusion started. It was with an innocent misunderstanding on the part on someone other than the daughter and or the aunt. It's all settled now to everyone's satisfaction. But, it should not have devolved into this fury in the first place. I'm not going to have this any more. I'm 47 years old and an elder now. This is the day that I take over as head of the family.