(no subject)
One of my clients is dying, and I've cried four times about it in the last twenty-four hours. I feel like saying that I don't know how to handle it, but I know that the truth is, I'm probably actually handling it in a very healthy way. It's appropriate to cry when someone you've know for two years not only has a brain tumor, but also (discovered in yesterday's MRI right before she was going to be released) pancreatic cancer as well. I know that I can keep hope up, and I certainly will do some of that. But it's also appropriate to acknowledge that she's almost certainly not going to survive this.
So when she and her two-and-a-half year old son came with us to a housing conference in Vail a few weeks ago, it turns out that her headaches and severe vertigo were not the result of the altitude combined with all her mental health issues. That was actually the brain tumor talking.
She's likely leaving tomorrow for Missouri to go stay with her sister and go to the University hospital there, for chemo and radiation. Her son is not quite two and a half, and while she has her struggles in parenting him, she loves him so much. And he might not end up with any solid memories of her. That's what really tears me up about this whole thing. She loves him so deeply, and is such a good mom to him, even when it's really hard for her, and he may not remember her at all, in anything concrete.
I know that it's probably not true, but part of what's hard about this is that my clients (homeless single moms and their kids) don't get cancer. Probably if they did have cancer, their family would take them in for longer amounts of time, and they wouldn't be homeless. But what it looks like to me instead is that poor people don't get cancer. I know that that isn't true, but it's really how I've been feeling these past few weeks since we found about about her cancer. I think of cancer as a middle-class disease. Which isn't to say that anybody, no matter their income status, deserves cancer. That's not what I'm saying. But it just strikes me as especially unfair that she's the one going through this. Because she hasn't been through enough in her life, clearly. No one deserves cancer, but it just sucks when you feel like you see someone who ESPECIALLY doesn't deserve it.
Anyway, I cried to Joe last night and tonight, and then twice at work, and probably tomorrow too. Which is a fine way to handle this. It just sucks, all around.
Other things are good. Work has just been stressful, with this stuff on all our minds for the past few weeks. (You can tell that I am stressed and not in hot shape when at the kids' support group tonight on feelings, we colored in those "How do you feel today?" pages. And I colored in the faces of overwhelmed, stressed, unsure, and sad.) But other things are good. I'm super excited to come home in a few weeks for Thanksgiving. I think the time at home will go super fast, but I'm really glad to get to come to Minnesota. And I'm glad to be bringing Joe with me. Friday marks a year for us, which is kind of crazy to think about. Crazy and wonderfully good, though. Also, in spite of the stress in recent days, I really do love my job, and I adore that I can say that.
So when she and her two-and-a-half year old son came with us to a housing conference in Vail a few weeks ago, it turns out that her headaches and severe vertigo were not the result of the altitude combined with all her mental health issues. That was actually the brain tumor talking.
She's likely leaving tomorrow for Missouri to go stay with her sister and go to the University hospital there, for chemo and radiation. Her son is not quite two and a half, and while she has her struggles in parenting him, she loves him so much. And he might not end up with any solid memories of her. That's what really tears me up about this whole thing. She loves him so deeply, and is such a good mom to him, even when it's really hard for her, and he may not remember her at all, in anything concrete.
I know that it's probably not true, but part of what's hard about this is that my clients (homeless single moms and their kids) don't get cancer. Probably if they did have cancer, their family would take them in for longer amounts of time, and they wouldn't be homeless. But what it looks like to me instead is that poor people don't get cancer. I know that that isn't true, but it's really how I've been feeling these past few weeks since we found about about her cancer. I think of cancer as a middle-class disease. Which isn't to say that anybody, no matter their income status, deserves cancer. That's not what I'm saying. But it just strikes me as especially unfair that she's the one going through this. Because she hasn't been through enough in her life, clearly. No one deserves cancer, but it just sucks when you feel like you see someone who ESPECIALLY doesn't deserve it.
Anyway, I cried to Joe last night and tonight, and then twice at work, and probably tomorrow too. Which is a fine way to handle this. It just sucks, all around.
Other things are good. Work has just been stressful, with this stuff on all our minds for the past few weeks. (You can tell that I am stressed and not in hot shape when at the kids' support group tonight on feelings, we colored in those "How do you feel today?" pages. And I colored in the faces of overwhelmed, stressed, unsure, and sad.) But other things are good. I'm super excited to come home in a few weeks for Thanksgiving. I think the time at home will go super fast, but I'm really glad to get to come to Minnesota. And I'm glad to be bringing Joe with me. Friday marks a year for us, which is kind of crazy to think about. Crazy and wonderfully good, though. Also, in spite of the stress in recent days, I really do love my job, and I adore that I can say that.