Not to be a downer... don't read if sad news will depress you.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
My mother in law broke her hip on Monday. She went to the hospital when it happened and they admitted her and put her on strong pain meds to help deal with the pain. She also is suffering from stage IV lung cancer and it had radiated out to other parts of her body. They believed they had it under control with radiation which she just finished up. Well apparently, in checking to see if her fall had been precipitated by a mild stroke they ordered a CT scan. The CT scan came back negative for signs of a stroke but it did come back with other disheartening news. The cancer has moved to her brain and there are free form cancer cells in the spinal fluid surrounding her brain. That's not good, not good at all. They are, however, discharging her this afternoon to her home to heal up the rest of the way from her broken hip which is apparently healing nicely but slowly. There is no word on what will happen with the spreading of the cancer.
This happened to my mother. She had developed lung cancer and it spread. It too landed in her cerebral-spinal fluid and it ended up being a contributing factor to her death. Because of the advanced chemo cocktail needed to treat the cancer, her immune system was extremely suppressed and she caught a bacterial respiratory infection which they just couldn't treat. That infection eventually took her life because she was simply too weak to keep fighting. It was an ugly, horrible thing to have to watch happen to someone and I fear I'm going to get a second dose in one lifetime.
I spoke with someone the other night about death and dying. I said that in my opinion dying sucks and death is simply the body's reprieve from the pain. How do I know that dying sucks? I watched my father die in his hospital bed, his lungs filling with fluid from the pulminary edema he had developed. He was on massive amounts of morphine to help him die quicker but watching him go was horrific and I am sometimes still plagued with nightmares of that night, nearly three years ago. I will spare you the gory details but suffice to say, I now know the agony that a fish is in when you pluck it from the water and drop it on land because I watched a similar fate unfold before me.
Man is mortal and the end is always ugly. I don't know why it has to be that way, but for some reason it is. I don't know anyone who has passed away in their sleep. I have only seen violent or struggling deaths and it gives me little hope for how my own life shall end.
I take with me, though, a greater love for life and a desire to suck every ounce of pleasure and happiness from it that I can. Some would call it sinful, I call it planning ahead. I don't touch drugs other than caffeine and alcohol and I likely never will. I intend to seek my highs a different way and hopefully I'll get there. I seek a pleasure high of a different sort. I'm sure some know what I'm talking about and others will just sit with a cocked head and wonder what I could possibly mean. If you knew me well, you'd know exactly what I'm seeking and either line up to join me or steer clear those nights that I need my fix.