Feeling down...

I don't have a question. I don't need advice. I just need to express my thoughts somewhere and somehow, and i quit using livejournal in 2008, so this is the best place I can think to put it.

This whole story revolves around a woman named Cindy. She's 51 years old now, but for you to really understand it all we'll need to go back a few years. I first met Cindy when I met her son, Paul, in my second-grade ALERT class (12 years ago now). Paul and I were friends throughout elementary school, but we parted ways at the end of 5th grade to go to different middle schools.

Paul and I reunited in my 10th grade PE class, and our friendship was as strong as ever. That was the year I formed my small group of really good high school friends, two of them smokers and four of them (Paul included) not. Paul lived less than a mile away from our high school, and on some afternoons we would go over to his house after school and hang out and talk with Cindy.

Cindy is one of the coolest parents I have ever met. She talked openly about her teenage years in the '70s, smoking herb, tripping on shrooms and acid, etc. She asked us if we smoked weed and warned us not to have it in the car, to keep it stashed well from our parents, and just to be careful in general. She smoked at least a pack a day, and she told us about how she had started smoking when she was around 14 or 15 and had become addicted. She told us not to start smoking cigarettes, and to stick with bud.

By junior year she had stopped claiming that she no longer smoked herb and admitted to us that she still partook every once in awhile. Cindy's husband, James, is a huge NASCAR enthusiast, and their entire garage was filled with NASCAR flags, posters, model cars, and everything else imaginable. There was a bar, a couch, and two chairs in there, and Cindy would let us smoke in there and listen to music. Occasionally she would partake, but not often.

On Saturday nights we would usually go over to her house, smoke up, and play Taboo or Clue (speaking always in the voice of your character) or Quelf (awesome board game, you should check it out) or Things. Some great times were had at her house.

Cindy is a very opinionated person, one who has a (usually very strong) opinion about everything and likes to have a finger in every pie. She had some great stories to tell, some of them hilarious and some of them not so happy. She's a great person to bounce ideas off of or to ask for advice. She is always sincere and honest when it comes to important things, which I value highly.

Now, this past summer (the summer after my first year of college), Cindy was diagnosed with lung cancer. They quickly put her on chemotherapy and radiation treatment, but by the time I left to go back to school this fall it had already metastasized to three or four other places. She is a very strong-willed person, and she said before we went back to college that she was going to fight it, and that she would be around at least until we all graduated (in three years), and - "who knows?" - it might even be 10 years.

The reason I made this thread in the first place is because I just got off the phone with her a little while ago. I have been thinking a lot about her since the semester started, but I had been putting off calling her because I knew it would get me down. She sounded so weak on the phone, and she was telling me about how cancer truly is a battle, about how her condition had gone downhill so quickly, about how they just recently discovered a tumor in her pelvic region that was larger than any of the others. She's temporarily not getting chemo or radiation because she is having her ovaries and part of (hopefully all) of the tumor removed on Thursday. She said she had lost a lot of weight and was walking with a cane now. Listening to her talk about having to take everything one day at a time, and sometimes even a minute at a time, never knowing when a sharp wave of pain could come on that might last for two hours or twelve, about how hard the radiation treatment was on her...made me cry. She is the last person on the planet who deserves to have to go through such a terrible, awful, drawn-out illness that ultimately will kill her at the time of its choosing. She kept saying she refuses to lay down and die, she's fighting it, she's going to be around for at least five more years...and I believe that she will fight it as hard as she can, because she loves life and her family too much to simply give up like that. But neither she nor her doctors nor anyone else honestly knows how much longer she'll be around.

And that fucking kills me.

 

Thanks, man.

 

Thank you for the inspiring words. Of course I am hoping with all my heart that she will be able to turn it around. But it's the not knowing that's so hard.

 

I just talked to Cindy's son, Paul. He said she hadn't been able to keep any food down since Monday, so her husband took her back to the hospital yesterday...and when he did, they decided to put her on Hospice care. I have absolutely no fucking clue what the fuck to think right now. I just talked to her on Sunday, and she didn't sound healthy, but she didn't sound bad either! I am literally in disbelief that this could happen so quickly. I'm trying to work it out so I can go home this weekend to see her one last time, but the reality that this would be the last time still hasn't set in.

Holy fuck.

 

They've given her one to three days to live.

This has gone downhill so fucking fast.

I'm in disbelief right now.

 

Thanks for the vibes, blades. I went home this past weekend and was thankfully able to visit her briefly. Her eyes were open and they assured me she could hear and understand what I was saying, but because she was heavily medicated she was barely moving and didn't say a word. I'm glad I got to see her, but of course now I feel like I didn't say everything I wanted to say.

I feel so fucking lost right now.

 

Cindy passed away at 6:15 this morning.