Tails of a 17th Street Geisha

I’ve never cried so much in my life. I hate this shit. I’m in total limbo going back and forth between hope and misery for my sister’s fate. The bumps on her skull that you can feel when you massage her scalp are diminishing, but she still has cancer in her spine. She’s getting radiation daily, but they have to work on her skull before they can do the spine because to do them both at the same time would be too intense. She seems okay during the day but she is in agony throughout the night and especially in the morning. She’s learning about the amount and combination of pain killers and muscle relaxers to feel okay and get through the day, but she shakes as a side effect to (what we’ve called) the opium patches and the shaking psyches her out and makes her stressed.

Her request for a hospice nurse to manage and monitor her pain and medicine was denied by insurance. My mom might be able to take time off of work and stay through May, but my mom admits that she doesn’t know if she can handle the stress. Who can take care of my sister when her husband inevitably returns back to work? She has daily radiation and 2 small children who are high maintenance by virtue of being 1 and 3 years old!

She hasn’t lost her hair yet and it’s the end of week 2 when her docs were expecting her to be completely bald. She never shaved and didn’t want me to either.

While I was there she barely asked for help. Her feet were freezing, her body ached, and she barely mumbled for some socks and a massage. When I did give her massages and did nice things, she was extremely apologetic and continually asked if she was being pushy. If she’s this way with me, someone who has known her for 28 years and purposefully flew out to LA to take care of her and stay with her then I’m sure that she will NEVER ask for help from her in-laws now that she’s moved into her mother-in-laws place.

The tense is immeasurable in my family. My brothers and sisters in LA had some weird fights that I was central to. At one point I was under the impression that I was banned from two of my sister’s home! The funny thing is that it all started with me running on a treadmill @ my sister’s home… I swear to God the next time I’m in LA, no matter how badly my sweet nieces beg for me to stay @ their house or my other sister offers a place for me to stay, I’m going to book it over to my born-again Baptist bro’s Peter’s house and see if I can get banned from that joint too!

I’ve been banned from many a club and bar on

. I’ve even been banned from an entire apartment complex, the Rocksboro, because of something I did bad during Pride one year. BUT to be banned from a family members house??? Fortunately, my sister Jennifer had exagerated and I wasn’t really banned from anyone’s house. I’m still going to avoid certain family members like the plague now. At least I now have the opportunity to get closer to my brother Peter’s family. Silver lining, Deb. Silver lining.

I survived the Ides of March. I set off two of my friend’s car alarms. Bri and I were extremely close to two car accidents that happened in front of our eyes, one at high speed on a freeway and the other in front of us on the way to the airport. I had dinner last night with Mardy and Jason and I was telling stories of NYE in NYC with Paul and Roz. We came to the conclusion last night that I rarely have a period of calm and rest and that my life is EXTREMELY drama filled, exciting and strange. Well, I thought my life was exciting.

Off to find a plug before my laptop runs out of juice.

*ps* I can’t believe that Cicero and Kort from Ms. Mag read my blog. You gals are too funny. Thanks Nohelia and Bri for your love. Jessie–you are too cute when we came and saw you at FMF west BH, same old high energy fun (miss it!)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 11:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.