(no subject)
My aunt died yesterday morning. Only three and a half months after she was diagnosed with cancer. When she was diagnosed back in September, they thought she had about six months if they didn't treat it so she started chemotherapy then, but her scan was brought forward last week because she was feeling increasingly unwell and they found that it had spread to her lungs, stopped chemotherapy and gave her a few weeks left. She died one day after I was told this.
We were all going to go up on Monday to see her and say goodbye. I was going to call her yesterday afternoon.
The two things that frustrate me the most are the fact that the rest of the family just didn't tell us. They know Caroline is a qualified doctor, they know I'm 17 months away from finishing medical school, but they didn't tell us that she'd been having symptoms for a year (by the way, weight loss of 1-2 stones without dieting is significant. Get it checked out!), or that she was getting worse or that there were delays in getting the histology report etc. Which were things that either of us could have sped up.
The other thing that frustrates me is that she had a colonoscopy a year before she was diagnosed. It must have been there and yet the morons somehow missed it. So many missed oppurtunities here.
At least she apparently got to say goodbye to all of her oldest friends and she went quickly, at home, surrounded by her closest family, as she wanted. And at least I don't have any truly unfinished business that I wanted to let out. In her phone call with my mum she apparently very specifically gave me her love and spoke fondly of me. Still, I wish I could have spoken to her or seen her.
Oh, and the bit in the last post about this, where I wondered (perhaps a bit dramatically) who was going to be next since dying young is a bit of a running theme in my family? My uncle (on the other side) was just diagnosed with colon cancer. Thankfully, it hadn't spread to any of the local lymph nodes and it's all been excised, but still, it's all a very scary thing. Maybe it'll convince him to stop bloody smoking once and for all. Thank God his partner badgered him into it (without any particular reason too).
We were all going to go up on Monday to see her and say goodbye. I was going to call her yesterday afternoon.
The two things that frustrate me the most are the fact that the rest of the family just didn't tell us. They know Caroline is a qualified doctor, they know I'm 17 months away from finishing medical school, but they didn't tell us that she'd been having symptoms for a year (by the way, weight loss of 1-2 stones without dieting is significant. Get it checked out!), or that she was getting worse or that there were delays in getting the histology report etc. Which were things that either of us could have sped up.
The other thing that frustrates me is that she had a colonoscopy a year before she was diagnosed. It must have been there and yet the morons somehow missed it. So many missed oppurtunities here.
At least she apparently got to say goodbye to all of her oldest friends and she went quickly, at home, surrounded by her closest family, as she wanted. And at least I don't have any truly unfinished business that I wanted to let out. In her phone call with my mum she apparently very specifically gave me her love and spoke fondly of me. Still, I wish I could have spoken to her or seen her.
Oh, and the bit in the last post about this, where I wondered (perhaps a bit dramatically) who was going to be next since dying young is a bit of a running theme in my family? My uncle (on the other side) was just diagnosed with colon cancer. Thankfully, it hadn't spread to any of the local lymph nodes and it's all been excised, but still, it's all a very scary thing. Maybe it'll convince him to stop bloody smoking once and for all. Thank God his partner badgered him into it (without any particular reason too).