The Big C

Hello again!

Been a difficult week this week.  DS started school (yay!!  all in school, LOVE that!) Work just keeps getting busier and busier and one of my best friends has cancerous cels in her stomach fluid.

Fuck

To give you a brief outline, my friend fought and defeated breast cancer about 5 years ago.  She did the chemo, lost all her hair, radiation and the whole shebang.  Since had a full hysterectomy since she is susceptible to this and after a few months of abnormal tummy bloating, finally had a test and BANG.  The Big C is back.

Now, this diagnosis (we do not know yet where the cells are coming from ) is Bad.  Capital B Bad.  After having a read online (never a good thing) It could be small, but most likely is not.  Just take a moment and think about this.

She is my age (around 40) healthy to the point of annoying when she wants to be, still smokes (yes, we know we know) but otherwise pretty darn healthy and been through all this crap before.  2 young kids, husband who loves her, stand in mum to her niece and nephew who lost their mother to Skin Cancer a few years ago....WTF? 

There is something seriously wrong with the universe when you finally get to this age, survived stupid stunts when you were young, tried most of the naughty drugs out there in the playground, managed to drive home a few times knowing you are over the limit, been to enough funerals to realise you really DO know alot of people (who did not make it home after said drinkies and drugs), finally meet The One, get married, have kids (whole other trauma and post) and then, just when you think you are safe, The Big C starts offing your friends one by one.  Seriously???  Enough to make me up my daily anti-depressant without a doctor visit.

In the past 5 years I have had my mother diagnosed (and successfully treated) for bowel cancer, a friend who thought she had beaten bowel cancer, only to not have, die, another friend get and treat breast cancer, my friend above get breast cancer, 2 of my neighbours parents die of various cancers, my other neighbour loose their son-in-law to pancreatic cancer within a year of his first child being born (that really sucks Big Time) my former boss get breast cancer (bit of karma there) and now my other friend gets cancer, again.

Where does it stop?  Is it really just, as I suspect, nature evening out the score as we keep living and using the earth unwisely? 

Once, a long time ago, I had a person say to me that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people.  At the time this hurt because I had been having a bad time in my marriage and life in general.  I read this to mean she thought I was a bad person and deserved the bad luck, in reality she just thought her shit did not stink and was rubbing it in to upset me.  But this is not true, as I am learning with age.  Really shitty, crap and fucked up things happen to good people, allot, while the scumbags of the earth sit in million dollar homes, with health care that means they can hire a whole hospital wing, get the best doctors and lawyers, while us good people trudge through the shit trying to survive.  As a new-born catholic (with a naughty edge) I wonder if telling my kids to say their prayers, do the right thing and believe in God is a realistic thing as it seems that He does not really listen either way.  But he still wants my money every Sunday???  Kinda feel like I am paying a tradie to do a job, and he gets my cheque but does not bother to show up.......

So, my darling friend who is now, literally, in The Fight For Her Life has to battle something that is not only a physical thing, but a mental thing that can tear you apart just as badly.  Now is the time to step up, be there, don't just offer to help but help without being asked and pray pray pray that it does not ......... you know.

The Big C sucks big, fat, hairy ones.  Fingers crossed and might have to go to mass a few more times.

xoxo