One year ago today, my Mother in Law died from cancer. She technically died of the lung cancer she was originally diagnosed with but in partial remission for. The brain tumor that flared up during her treatments was the most recent cancer she was treated for. It was the treatments that led to her ultimate death. They left her weak and unable to fight. I suspect it was a combination of the steroids and chemo they had her on. She had never taken well to Steroids and those truly just pushed her over the edge.

I don't really know why I am ruminating on this. I suppose it is because a year ago, I wasn't ready. Cancer is a horrible way to die. My Mother in Law went quite literally mad toward the end. She would rant and rave. She begged us to kill her, not because of the cancer, but because she was afraid everyone would think she was a drug addict. In the end, she gave up. She couldn't fight anymore.

The treatments had left her weak, unable to eat, and miserable. The downward spiral began when surgery was performed on the tumor that pressed up against her brainstem. She never recovered from this. After the surgery, she never walked again. The surgery was done simply to perform a biopsy on the tumor. It wasn't even cancerous. But, to treat the tumor, they had to do so like it was. The steroids they gave her to shrink the tumor made her hallucinate. They also left her in a perpetual state of nausea so she couldn't eat. The other drugs they had her on, created a sort of mock diabetes in her system so she also had to take insulin shots daily (and she was petrified of needles).

It was a horrible thing to watch. Her body became swollen from the drugs and her soul became gaunt and unfed. People with cancer whither away. Even if they gain weight, they whither away. You can watch the soul grow lean and angry or even insane. In the end, my Mother in Law was gone. She may have still been with us, but she wasn't there. The day I had to comfort my sobbing husband, I knew that she wasn't going to come back from where ever it was she went.

There are only two people I've ever seen him cry for and one of those people is me. That was the day she begged him to kill her. She laid her cards on the table and begged him. She was quite crazy by this point, but she wanted to die. She asked him to take care of me and his father and then asked him to put her out of her misery. She also ranted about the bugs crawling over her skin and inside her veins.

I wish I had gotten to know her better. I wish we had gotten more time with her. I wish a good many things.

But such is life.

Rest in Peace

Katheline Measles Stewart 1953 - 2004

Posted by Utopia at December 5, 2005 08:25 AM

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Posted by: YummY! at December 6, 2005 01:22 AM

Posted by: Seraphim at December 8, 2005 04:27 AM

Posted by: Utopia at December 8, 2005 08:41 AM

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