Are you serious?

SO they found ANOTHER surprise near the lymph nodes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymph_node in case you wanted to know.  Is anyone even reading this?   Guess I'm just another person yelling into a thunderstorm at this point I suppose.  So be it.  It wouldn't be too far removed from my RL.  It feels like people hear me but still don't hear me.  I try to hear other people and do my best to actually listen, digest, process and the offer what little advice I can.  Some people  might think how can I  give advice on a situation I have never been in perhaps. Good reasoning but having NOT been in a given situation  and seeing it form the outside gives someone a different perspective.  This perspective might help the other person  to come to a decision ( for good OR bad) that they might never have come up with in the first place.  +1 for me I guess.

Back to the situation.  She is going to have a talk with a surgeon on thursday.  Most likely she will need a breast removed or both if they find something else.  She will get a Nancy Reagan then.  Maybe.  Fuck off  DNA.   Lucky for her, her father's side of the family( biological deadbeat father) has a history of cancer.  Isn't that nice?  /sigh

Let me tell you a little about me.  Then you can make up your own mind about who you think I am.  Let me preface this tirade with one thing.  I do NOT think I'm the only person who has had to suffer some shit throughout their life.  I'm just another person like you maybe who has.  So if you get offended by my sob story go fuck yourself.

I got to see my parents fight with each other from about the time i was7 or 8.  I can remember back that far but a week ago I can't remember shit from.  Thanks Brain!  I also got to see my mother become the alcoholic she died as.  Lucky for her it was the cancer that killed her and not her liver giving out.  I got to see my parents get divorced when I was 11.  Thanks marital issues.  This happens to be one of the reasons I don't personally believe in marriage.  Thats another blog altogether.  I got to make the choice, at 11, of who I wanted to live with and who I wanted to visit every other weekend.  Thanks legal system.  It was always Fun visiting my dad in Mahwah when he lived there.  It was even MORE fun when My mother decided to move out and my father moved in so that didn't fuck up a young kid at all.  Basically derailing his decision on who he wanted to live with.  Nice going.  That was probably when I started to shutdown emotionally for the most part.

I'm sure someone might say that started when they got divorced.  Don't kid yourself ok.  I knew why they were getting a divorce.  I found out santa wasn't real by myself when i was 3 and found the gifts in the closet.  I'm not a stupid person by any stretch.  For the better I suppose.  There was never any violence in the house when i was a kid.  If I had to say I think I had an ok childhood.  Halloween was always my favotire time of year. The whole family would get dressed up and trick or treat together.  Going down the shore was also a big family thing. Always fun to be had.  I can still remember the smell of the bathroom in the one house we rented.  Some things you never forget.  but why the most random things with no real situational emotion attached to them?  lol

SO I live the next Few years with my father.  I got to see him be diagnosed with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheumatoid_arthritis . He had his own contractor company that he supported his family with when we all lived as a family.  He could no longer do that because of the arthritis.  Once again Fuck You DNA.  Wo we had to move in with my aunt and uncle and I got to share an attic room with my father during my first 2 yrs of highschool.  I hut down more then because I couldn't have anyone over since I would have had no privacy.  And did I mention that my grandmother lived there also.  It was a nice place with a bunch of old people.  My grandmother had diabetes so that was always fun.  I think it came to a head for me when one thanksgiving they invited 2 of their friends over for dinner.  2 more old people.  One of them, the woman, Nearly choked on a kernal of corn.  I was done with any emotions from that point on other than laughter.  No anger, no sadness.  Just laughter.  I love to laugh at things and comedians and funny movies.

When I say no sadness I mean it.  Say what you will but when my mother died I was right there next to her head whispering to her that it was ok to let go.  That she would get to see grandpa and grandma again and all of her other friends who had died.  I counted the seconds between her breaths and watched her chest rise and fall with each one.  Her next to last breath had 13 seconds between the in and out.  The next one was her last.  They say you can still hear when in a coma.  She had breast cancer and it spread to her brain. It was stage 4.    She died there, in front of me , with my sister my brother and 2 of her closest friends.  Everyone but me cried.  Some say it was the shock.  I just saw someone die so maybe at that moment they were right.  But by now, nearly 3 yrs later, you would think I would have cried at some point.  Nope.  I don't get angry at people, not like someone else would.  I get annoyed yes but not ANGRY.  no RAGE moments that burst forth.   I internalize the emotion and let out just enough so that people know there is a problem.  I worked at Best Buy for 2.5 yrs during the time my mother had been diagnosed and during some of her treatment.  I worked with the same people for 2.5 yrs on a daily basis.  None of them could even tell something was wrong

Skill at hiding whats bothering me?  I don't know if I would call it a skill.  But I was able to keep it inside when it needed to be.  I guess I just never figured out how to let it out again.

So there is a little bit about me.  There is a lot more dealing with school and how much fun that was and having to deal with a VERY good friends death in middle school.  But thats yet another story.

See ya.

Michael Hanson

Unreal how crappy life can be.

     Ok, so here we go. Let me give you a little tidbit about MY history. MNy mother was diagnosed with cancer about 3 yrs ago. RIP mom.  It was stage 4 breast cancer.  Who knows how long she had it before she got diagnosed.   She was a smoker and a heavy drinker since I was but a weeee lad.  There are pictures to atest to this.  Like the one of me in my brand new trycicle with her in the forground with a scotch in one hand and a smoke in the other.  Whatever.

     So she get diagnosed and goes through getting her breast removed and chemo.  Loses a majority of her hair and has to start wearing a wig.  ALL of this at  like age 58 or 59.  I dont' remember exactly.  I have a tendancy to forget things that are painful to me.  As do a lot of us I'm sure.   I digress.  She did all of this and the cancer went into remission.  She of course had given up on life at this point and was just  waiting it out.  She never said as much but, she was my mom.  I could tell.  I loved with her, on her couch, for 2 and half yrs.  Dealing with the alcoholism and smoking and general malaise regarding life and where she was.  suks when you you see your mother, the person who raised you, give up.

     She just went through the motions so to speak.  /sigh.  You try to get them to be glad they are in remission but it doesn't always work i guess.  I would be glad it was gone for the time being.  Glad i could live without ti hovering over me each and everyday with chemo treatments and medication.  Not my mother.  Mountain out of a mole hill so to speak.  we weren't the perfect mother and son, we had our yelling moments.  I loved her though.  She was my mom.  Mommy. Mother.  The person who would put a bandaid on a scratch and tell me it would be all better in a little while.  Tell me no to be scared of the dark because nothing was there that wasn't there in the dark that wasn't there in the day.  The one who would make me macaroni and cheese ( my favorite food) when I wasn't feeling well.  That's who my mother was.

     I remember being ther , in hospice, when she was near the end.  My sister, my brother and my mothers 2 closest friends were there as well.  I remember taking a video with my digital camera of her cats and showing it to her.  The coma she was in from the cancer  wasn't total or so they said.  They are supposed to still be able to see and hear.  I showed her the video and promised I would take care of them for her.  I remember whispering in her ear that it was ok to go now.  To just let go.  That she would be able to see grandpa (her father) and grandma (her mother) again.  She missed her father very much after he died.  My grandmother died of lung cancer.

     I remember counting the seconds between her last few breaths.  And then she just stopped breathing.  She as gone forever.  The person she was, everything she had ever done, was gone.  Memories remain.  My sister took it terribly hard.  They argued and yelled at each other.  But only because they cared about one another deep down and didn't know how to show it.

     I write this because my sister has found a lump in her left breast.  The same place my mother found hers.  My sister has 2 kids.  One is in college now, first semester, and the other is in highschool.  It has me wondering how someone who believes in GOD can rationalize this kind of thing.  If I believed in GOD I would curse it.  But I dont' believe in GOD.  So I wonder how long it will be before man manages to conquer his inevitable weakness in body and not be dependant on medications to cure sickeness.