Cancer and counter-culture courage

Since bringing mom-in-law Ivalene home from the hospital, we’ve been hit with the crud. The most energy I’ve expended has been heating up chicken noodle soup and making mugs of TheraFlu and throwing a fleece blanket into the dryer to tuck around my chilled mother-in-law.

Photo credit: Unsplash

The blanket-in-the-dryer idea was something I did for Hubby because chemo chilled him. He would groan in absolute utter sheer bliss every time I spread a dryer-heated fleece blanket over him.

When your kid sister reverts to her childhood ways

On Thursday, we took Ivalene to her first and only visit with an oncologist. No surprises—she has declined treatment—but it’s now official and a referral has been made for hospice care.

My mother-in-law is defiant courageous plucky independent no-nonsense. And she passed this down to all her children. Back when Hubby’s second nephrostomy tube fell out, our hospice field nurse, Melinda, indicated he had 24-48 hours left. “Renal failure,” she said.

But 24-48 hours came and went. “He has tenacity,” Melinda said when she stopped by the house again. “He’s broken all the rules. Maybe there’s still something he wants to teach us.”

Hubby had defied the odds since time of diagnosis. He lived ten years with late stage prostate cancer that had spread to the lymph system and eventually to the bladder, bones, liver. He shouldn’t have lived that long.

“Maybe what he wants to teach us is this sitting still and acknowledging all that is precious around us,” I wrote in my journal back then. “This slowing down. This drinking in peace. These young adult children who have come long distances. The meal that will be delivered by friends later this evening. Snow falling.”

Hubby’s medical needs eventually became more than I was capable of handling at home, and a bed opened up at Hospice House, which we gratefully accepted. He did not come home from Hospice House.

This thought from Ashley Davis Bush:

We live in a world that doesn’t like pain. We too might be tempted to turn from it, to keep the stiff upper lip. But grief asks us to touch pain, to sit with pain and to ask it to tea.

I have touched pain and sorrow; I’ve sat with it and shared my Chai latte with it. And I have come away from the encounter more compassionate tenacious resilient belligerent pertinacious.

Ashley Davis Bush goes on to say:

Being with your sorrow is brave. It is counter-culture courage.

Hubby had counter-culture courage. Mom-in-law has counter-culture courage. As for caregivers everywhere, you know that it takes counter-culture courage to walk beside your loved one as he/she journeys toward death.

My best advice from my failures and successes as a cancer caregiver: Wrap that courage around you like a fleece blanket warm out of the dryer. Take one day at a time. Accept help. Let people love you as you travel this particular noteworthy distinct sweet heart-wrenching care-giving journey. For you’ll never travel this exact journey with this exact person. Ever again.

P.S. If you know of a caregiver who could use some encouragement, please share, tweet or pin!