Trip to Richmond

My cousin John is not doing well. 

Y'all know I spent time with him in the summer for his radiation and all that. Good news is the radiation shrank his tumor on his hip. Bad news is the shrinking tumor broke his hip. He messaged me repeatedly over the weeks saying how much pain he was in and how the doctors/hospital were not helping him manage his pain. They were not taking him seriously. I felt bad but there was nothing I could do for him but encourage him to keep at them. 

They didn't realize until late September when he had his follow up scans that his hip was broken. Uh, oops?

Well yeah. Good job, assholes. Someone give this guy some pain killers for fuck's sake. 

When he and I spoke last, it was a couple weeks after we'd moved in here. I'd been incredibly busy and exhausted. He'd text me and I'd either not reply or send back "i'm sorry to hear that," or something else simple. 

One day I took a break and called him. He let me know about the broken hip, and how he had been yelling at them about how much pain he was in, and they said "that's normal." So he felt wildly vindictively JUSTIFIED in his brutal anger at them when he let them have it. This is and was not normal. The fuck did you think, people?

Anyway... he was going to see an orthopaedic oncologist. Doug said they'd probably do a hip replacement. And I said well fuck? Why didn't they do a hip replacement in the first fucking place when he got a fucking tumor on his fucking hip?

I don't understand medical shit sometimes. I don't understand.

He said he had to go, his friend was there with dinner. He'd call me back. Anyway. I didn't hear back from him. 

Last week, his brother messaged the cousin group to say John had a perforated bowel, was going in for emergency surgery, and if he survived the surgery was not going to continue cancer treatments. He'll enter into palliative care instead. But to be honest, he should maybe be transitioning to hospice. Maybe that is exactly what it is. But for right now he's in the ICU.

So. 

That said.

Huh. 

When we last saw each other in July, it didn't end well. If you want you can go back and read about our final afternoon together. 

If you don't want to go back and read, the short version is I ended up leaving in a state of fury about shit he said. I still don't want to talk about it. A few people know what went down. But he and I never cleared the air on it. I wanted an acknowledgement and apology from him. Everyone who knows him that I've shared this with said he never will acknowledge or apologize. 

I have a couple choices - just forget that he said incredibly horrible racist (and other things) and move on with my life. I could bring it up and press it to see if he'd realize that he said horrible things that were super horrible. 

Or I could just ignore it and let it go. What good does it do?

I talked about this extensively with my best girl at work, someone I value as a best best friend. My work wife. My soul mate. Who happens to be black. 

She asked in July "If he called you and needed you, would you go to help?"

In July, I told her I didn't know if I would or not. 

So it is almost December, nothing is really different aside from the fact he is most likely going to die very soon. His brother went to visit him a couple weeks ago and said he didn't think he'd make it to Christmas and well, that's probably the best prediction of the truth there could be. None of us banked on a perforated bowel being the thing that would probably hasten the situation. But. Here we are. 

Linda is flying in on Thursday. She, Doug, and I will head to Richmond Friday morning. His brother will already be there, I think he's going down on  Thursday.  We'll get back up here Sunday and get Linda to the airport to go home Monday. A little bit of a whirlwind tour. Not what I imagined for her first visit to the new house.

To be honest, Doug thinks we're going to be too late. And sometimes Doug's medical intuition is spot on. But we'll see. We'll see. And if nothing else, we can maybe just help pack up his stuff in his apartment? 

I have boxes. So many boxes. I save boxes when the vast majority of folks will pitch them or recycle them. But I've got 'em. I was going to start collapsing them into each other for storage. Still can.

So that's the muppet update there with that whole scene. More later on things. Not a great picture but this was the last time the 8 of us were together. At gammy's funeral. Back in the day. I'm top left, John is next to me. He's half that size now. He'd be quick to mention that. "Cancer is a hell of a weight loss program."

Digits below.

digits

exercise: 12/12 hours. 10 min indoor walk between meetings/.46 mi. 20 minute outdoor freezing my ass off walk, 1.25 miles. 10k+ steps by bedtime

blood glucose:

8:15am: 140
5pm: 100
11pm: 110

food & meds:
8:15am: jardiance+phentermine
10:45am: english muffin w/pb & low sugar j
2pm: met+glip
2:45pm: 2 pieces of left over quiche (sausage, red pepper, goat cheese)
6pm: some sort of chicken and rice concoction with sauteed mushrooms (a la Geoff). Red wine.
9pm: Met+glip (almost forgot to take).