Cafe Hitch-hike

2023-06-03

Life’s knocking harder at our door

I’m procrastinating before I either read, write, or clean house.

Avery got me a can of Illy coffee that is pressurized, and I’ll talk about that in a moment.

It’s another one of those times when I stand in a netherworld. My sis Rosepetal had been in ICU at least twice in the past because of her blood clotting disorder, and it really wasn’t looking good. However, she pulled through and she’s living life as usual with her 5 children.

I was just talking to my younger sis Big Momma who gave me the lowdown on her son’s Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis. It’s worse than anyone thought. When it was first diagnosed it, it was stage 3. They didn’t say anything about that outside immediate family for obvious reasons.

My nephew, who is 25, was in a denial that I had never seen with the diagnosis. From what my sister described, he was acting like very childish about it and literally had temper tantrums. BM was pleading with him to get treatments, but he was defiant and his father wasn’t helping matters. It got so bad that Nephew could barely function and had to move in with my sister because he was faring so poorly.

My nephew finally agreed to treatment and to comply with it, but things got worse. He felt terrible with the treatment, had to go into the hospital for a few days because his sodium levels got so low, and was having cognitive issues. Although his form of cancer is highly treatable, it turned out to be an aggressive form and highly likely to be at stage 4.

It reminded me of when Uncle Joe was diagnosed. I was concerned he wouldn’t take the diagnosis seriously at all (and, being in a progressed stage of alcoholism didn’t help), but he turned out to comply after all. The only problem was by that time, it was already stage 4 and when he got the diagnosis, the oncologist recommended hospice care. We said goodbye to Joe about 8 weeks later.

I was concerned when Uncle, my old friend Remy, and my friend Carlo all got swelling in the ankles and feet. I didn’t want to say anything to my sis about that, but my stomach sank when she said her son had that. In those 3 cases, it meant organs were starting to fail. My nephew’s feet did the same thing (and I don’t think he can walk since my sis mentioned a wheelchair). I said nothing, just like when I was aware that cancer can be very aggressive when it’s with a younger person.

My sister just told me about the stage 3 and perhaps 4 diagnosis when I asked her if I could make us a cup of coffee cos I know she loves coffee and maybe it would cheer her up, even if we were talking on the phone. She said sure, and when I opened the tab of the pressurized coffee can, a spray of fine coffee grounds spurted and sprayed my face, the kitchen counter, the sink and the floor.

“Aw, shit,” I yelped, and then laughed so hard. My sis asked what was wrong and I said I had a little accident. I sent her a picture of my face with a streak of coffee grounds across it. Some was on the tip of my nose, chin, and over one eyelid and an eyebrow. It looked like I got splashed by mud. I also had a smudge on my chest. It kinda matched the color of my eyes and hair. I must had had my mouth open because I had some coffee grounds inbetween my front teeth.

I sent her the pictures and we had a good laugh. It guess it was a cosmic push of comedy with such difficult news. She also recalled something that was funny on the way to her daughter’s graduation a few weeks ago, and we had some more laughs.

(Oh, yeah, and the daughter just got accepted to a master’s-level program for criminal justice at the same place where she graduated. I once joked maybe we can be in grad school at the same time and I guess we really will be. If she gets her PhD, I guess I’ll be obliged :D. I was soooo happy to hear. I liked college, but liked grad school more for the most part).

My nephew’s form is so aggressive that it reminded me of when my old friend Remy had Non-Hodgkins lymphoma in his early 20s: the type of treatment he had made it likely he could get leukemia later in life and that was exactly what happened. Remy never had children, and he got tested at one point (he never told me the results), but that was another likely outcome of my nephew’s treatment. But, Remy never regretted his fights. Because he was so brash besides, he felt like more of a bad-ass for beating it (yet had a very healthy respect for his Uncle Lukey - leukemia- and always listened to his medical care team). My nephew is in for a big fight and I can only hope he can cop some of Remy’s attitude.

At this point, I’m very concerned and of course, this can go so many ways. I feel so bad for my sister. I crowed about losing so many people over the years, but my sis was at ground zero for a few of her own as a caregiver. She also looked after my sis Bre after she lost her daughter (and gee, now they aren’t talking).

Like with my sis Rosepetal, I’ll be heading to the local church to light a candle and say some prayers. It may very well be in vain, some people might say there is no god, but I have my own beliefs about all of that.

For what it’s worth, I pray that the next time I have to go to back to the river valley hometown, it’s for a happy reason rather than the obvious.

There’s so many thoughts in my mind about this. I think about the low regard so many people around us had for life, and the terrible ways people treated themselves and others. I remember saying to others that my family really didn’t have any deaths or illnesses for a long time (but jail time and similar things) and I thought we were unusually insulated considering we had such a large family. If anything, I was the first to this loss when my birth father died, and that was its own complicated matter since we were estranged (yeah, when everyone assumed it was no big deal and didn’t want to hear about it).

I just feel so bad for my nephew’s siblings and cousins because they’ve lost more people close their their age than my sis and I had; my nephew was close to his cousin Arielle who was murdered at age 18 almost 4 years ago. My generation had some serious merde to live with, but no one died when we were young. I’m not saying our time has come, I’m just saying life’s knocking harder at our door.

downwind | upstream