Have I told you recently…
how much I HATE cancer?
It’s insidious, crafty, cunning and sly.
It doesn’t care who you know, how much you are loved, how much money you make or don’t or what holiday is coming up next.
It has entered into our lives, taken hold and will not even for a moment relinquish control.
The game it plays is a funny one.
It takes it’s turn, maybe even two turns at a time (it doesn’t care much for the rules) and then we take our turn, almost always lagging behind but non-the-less trying to move ahead, catch-up to it and maybe even out smart it.
It’s a hard game to play.
And if you’re not the player, it is a hard game to watch unfold before your eyes.
My dad continues to play his version of the game.
His next move includes radiating two sections of his spine, starting next week and ending three days before Christmas.
Oh how I so desperately wish I could draw the card that allows him to pass GO, collect $200 and WIN.
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Last year, my mom pulled the dreaded Property Repairs card. Lots of hospital visits, chemo, radiation therapy, steroids, and all the crap that goes with it. And unfortunately it wasn’t a game she could win – glioblastoma, the most common and incurable form of brain cancer.
The doctors said with treatment we should get roughly another year with her. And for good or for ill, that’s about how long she was with us, holding out through Mothers Day so she could spend time with her family. She slipped into a coma the next day and all her pachisi tokens arrived at home a week and a half later.
Funny thing. I played my last game with her a week before Mothers Day: a warm, friendly game of Yahtzee. I could tell her concentration wasn’t there when she was slow to process her strategy. But we made it through, and had a damn fine time doing it.
And the best thing that came of that Yahtzee game?
She won.