Tails of a 17th Street Geisha

I’m in Pomona right now. Luckily Susan’s husband Richard said it was okay for me to stay with them even though there’s not much space in their 1 bedroom. Currently, Richard, Susan, Harmony (3), Jeremy (1), my mom and I are occupying the space which is about 700 sq feet!

I was going to stay with Bri who lives but a mile away but I would have to job by a winnebago meth lab each morning and Richard okayed my staying with them–pheeewwww!!!

Each day is different for Susan. She can barely move, she stays in bed all day only surfacing to eat and take her meds. She barely eats and rarely smiles. Her bones ache. She used to think it was because of the tumors, but the doc said it’s the chemo. She’s doing radiation on her skull and will start radiation on her spine tomorrow (if everything checks out with insurance issues.)

One day I cried so hard because her 3 year old daughter, cute as a button and who looks like a mini-Betty Boop, started crying and told me,  "mommy and daddy are gone and mommy has a lot of boo boos and mommy sees the doctor and everybody’s calling and mommy has a lot of boo boos." I totally lost it. Seeing my sister in SO much pain is really upsetting too. She can barely speak most of the time. Her legs are sore from being immobile.

She got a second opinion from the head of the UC Irvine Gynecologic Oncology division. Good news: he said that her current doc is giving her the best chemo. Bad news: they diagnosed her so late that it couldn’t be determined whether her cancer originated as cervical or endometrial cancer so they couldn’t stage her, as a result they can’t put her on even more aggressive clinical trials.

I feel horrible. All i can do for Susan now is give her massages to relax her and help my mom take care of the kids. Oh, and help pack since they’re moving to a bigger place…

I come back on Thursday so I have another week to spend with her. I’m glad, but I’m also SO stressed. My mom hasn’t shown any emotion about it, I’m wondering how she’s holding it together. All she does is pray. I’ve been sleeping more than I’ve ever slept in my entire life. I slept 7 hours last night and slept 3 hours during the day. I keep falling asleep before 10pm and getting up at around 6am. Poor Susan wakes up 3 times a night to go to the bathroom and I just don’t know how she’s faring with her pain and sleeplessness…

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 9th, 2006 at 10:10 pm 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.