The C word

Hearing about someone's cancer that has returned with a vengeance and the proposed course of treatment is a lot different when it is not your own immediate family member, even if that person is so close that she might as well be. And I hate that I was so detached in my emotions when I heard the rundown. It was not shocking since we knew she was having serious problems and the initial symptoms have been so awful that the patient required an inpatient hospitalization for one of the procedures to handle those issues [more of a band-aid really for the real problem than an actual solution].
I really want to hear my sister in law's in-depth take on the situation, but I don't want that to be the only thing we discuss at length on our upcoming family trip to visit them - so I'm gonna have to carve out the time to hear it all with my mom, and out of earshot of big eared children who would need to have a million and one questions answered before they could comprehend the seriousness of it all. At this stage, the doctors are optimistic with several variations of new therapies they could try since the last round of chemo did not go so well on this person's nervous system, however, I kinda get the feeling (without having met with the dr or the patient all that recently) that it is only a matter of time before they exhaust their various options and I wonder if the patient will be strong enough to endure. In all truths, I know that we all eventually wear out this body that we are given, I just hope that she has enough courage to muster the strength to go throught the treatment and all it entails. I know that her yet unborn grandchild might be a good motivator as well as the fact that her family and her children and grandchildren still need her daily. Now in writing this piece I realize what a(nother) cancer diagnosis can do to a family, even though my mother went through hers not so long ago. Mothers truly are the glue that hold a family together. Even when their children are grown and living independently. Daughters depend on mothers and that is just the way it should be.