Functional

The time has come, the time is now, annoying breast cancer, will you please go now?

Emotional blows are the single hardest thing to process.  There are waves of uncertainty, anger, sadness, obnoxious hyper-ness (not a word, get over it), irritability, and confusion.  There is also numbness where everything hits at once and you don't know which emotion to feel, so you don't feel anything.  That's when you are just "functional".  Last night my mom and Grandma called to inform me that the time has come for major decision making.  Grandma has been fighting her evil cellular parasite (breast cancer) since January and has been doing a stellar job.  She hasn't complained, she just says "what's next?".  Well after 2 rounds of chemo, 7 weeks of radiation, and a laundry list of drugs, the cellular parasite will simply not go away.  Complications, rebounds, ups, downs, and everything in between have come to this woman and she hasn't flinched.  So yesterday they decided do we keep fighting with medicine and not guarantee anything other than a slew of doctors appointments, medications, bills, and treatments?  Or do we decide to let her do whatever the world she wants and progress from there?  It was decided that medical intervention would no longer be a thing.  She's tired of constantly planning her life around doctor appointments and treatments.  She wants to do everything on her "own".  I put own in quotations because regardless of her thought of doing things by herself, we're all still 100% behind, beside, and in front of her.  Surrounding her with love and support.  The term that the doctors and others have use to label this decision is "hospice".

Hospice has so many negative connotations that it borders suicidal in thought processes.  She's the exact same woman, her body is the exact same, her mind is the exact same, her heart and love are the exact same.  The only difference is now there will be nurses to help with her current medications, and she won't be going through any treatments.  It is an assistance in this case because the Hospice company now takes care of her bills, covers medications, and ensures that she is able to get whatever care she needs to make life easy.  She won't have to be labeled as a Home Health case to get nurses, and Home Health is where the patient is "home bound" in order to get nursing assistance.  Grandma HATES the prospect of anyone labeling her as "home bound".  Yeah right.  Not a thing.  With "Hospice" she is allowed to do whatever she feels like and not have to worry about it being "too much" for whatever coverage she has for bills and medications and assistance.  This is an organization that assists those that have a terminal diagnosis and they want to make life a little bit easier.  You can be on hospice for years.  It does not have to be a short term schedule.

I understand this, I know what it all means, but the emotions that are attached to the word "hospice" are still just as strong.  This is why I label myself as "functional".  I've run through the entire list of emotions and my body can't decide which one it wants to deal with first.  Despair?  Fear?  Sadness?  Anger?  Hope?  Stubbornness?  Hatred towards God?  Insanity?  Love?  Confusion?  Numbness?  If you see me running around like a complete crack head, doing sprints, monkey-ing on pull up bars, or just looking like a lunatic, that's because that is just about the only defense I have left.  There is nothing that I can do to stop this cellular parasite from continuing it's war against my Grandma.  There wasn't anything I could do when she was going through treatments either, but the constant treatments and doctors visits brought about the illusion of treatment.  The odds really are about the same with or without treatment.  If the tumors were able to grow during treatment, or immediately after treatment stopped, then they are just as stubborn as she is.  So there's no stopping them.  There's no stopping her either.

Yes, my family is heart broken.  Yes, our last line of hope with treatments has been cut and we're left hanging there with the cut end watching hope fly away from us.  But that doesn't change who she is.  It just takes away the mirage, illusion, figment of our imagination, whatever you want to call it, from us so we no longer know where to ground ourselves.  Before it was, "what's the next treatment?", "What't the next step?".  Now we don't know.  Do we ground ourselves in faith?  Hope?  Love?  Aliens?  Voodoo?  What?  I don't know anyone who has the answers, because there isn't one.

Do what you need to cope and deal with everything, but remember that Grandma isn't giving up and she is proud of all of us because we don't know how to give up.  We have all overcome something in our lives and have all become successful in our own rights.  She loves us and loves the fact that we are all strong.  Temporary weakness is normal, but don't let it become the overwhelming norm.  Until I figure out however I'm dealing, I will continue to just be functional.  Functional is what will get us through the day, because time will pass no matter how we feel.  Happiness is a stretch, functional is now.