My Aunt
My aunt is sick. Her body is bent and broken thanks to a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis and last year the doctors decided to take one foot and the other leg, citing the arthritis aggressively cutting circulation to her feet.
Last week she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
This past weekend she had a stroke.
She turned down any form of treatment for her cancer because (1) she wouldn't recover and (2) because she didn't want to experience all that pain and suffering to still have the cancer and the arthritis.
My mom called this morning to say the doctors gave her a two week window to live.
Apparently, the plan is to have her cremated, but I was wondering, with her conditions, whether or not donating her body to research would be the wisest course of action. She won't. Believe it or not, she's way too modest to let people poke around her body. Heck, she won't even let people take pictures of her.
Life gave my aunt the short end of the stick. It really did. Due to her arthritis she never really had a career even though she was training to be a paramedic when her hands got so bad she couldn't hold a glass much less a syringe or more technical equipment. She was married once, but divorced before I was born. To the best of my knowledge, I never met the guy. I remember, when I was a kid, she had a boyfriend and was happy for a while. Turns out, he was a loser who emptied their joint bank accounts and took off in the night, taking their brand new car with him.
The last I heard he wrapped it around a pole while driving drunk. She was still making payments to protect her credit.
Unfortunately, her body being as sick as it was most of her life, she didn't have any friends of her own. She couldn't or wouldn't leave the house unless family was visiting or for those few trips to see movies in the theater. Books were her escape and her "shows" were her friends.
She still never gave up on medical science, though, and would watch all the science based dramas on TV, the more gory the better.
My aunt was on social security most of her life, as well as Medicare or Medicaid. Or both. She even qualified for the "Obama" phone. Florida, being a Tea Party state told her she should go get a job.
As I already stated, she was married once, but never had any children of her own. Instead, she doted on me and my brother and a few other nieces and nephews. And while she was always caring, she wasn't always the nicest person to be around. As a child I didn't make the connection, but as an adult I can see where the pain might have been too bad or the medications might have been having side effects.
She fell in love with Rufus when I was down there last and I'd hoped to bring him down with me to cheer her up, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen either. As it is, getting down there will be tough. I don't have a lot of extra money laying around.
This will be hardest on my mom. My aunt moved in with my mother after I'd already left for the Army. Grandma was already living there. In 2006 my grandmother died. A couple of years later my uncle died of some sort of intestinal cancer. He was the youngest of my mom's siblings. When I was younger, two other brothers of my mother died. And now her sister whom she's shared a home with most of her life.
As I said, I'll be heading to Florida soon to try and see her one more time while she's still alive. According to my brother, the plan is to bring her ashes to Colorado and spread them around on Pike's Peak.
When I was 14 or 15, we came to Colorado for a vacation. My aunt, naturally, tagged along. I think it was one of the last true vacations she ever took. It wasn't a family reunion or a death or anything else, it was just a trip to Colorado. We drove up to the top of Pike's Peak and she looked out over the clouds. There's a picture of my aunt standing on the edge of the Earth, clouds spread out before her, at my mother's house. it's one of few pictures of her since her arthritis set in.
That is how I want to remember her, not the woman who's body failed her, leaving her confined to a chair and then finally killed her for no good reason.
There will probably be more to this post as I remember things to add, but this is the second time I typed this out (the first not saving) and I can't be sure I said everything needing to be said.
A call from my mom this morning said my aunt might not live to see this weekend. So, I'm flying down to Florida tomorrow with an open return date.
ADDENDUM: I just learned a few minutes ago that my aunt died in her sleep. I'm still heading to Florida but no so urgently as before when I'd hoped to catch her alive.
Last week she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
This past weekend she had a stroke.
She turned down any form of treatment for her cancer because (1) she wouldn't recover and (2) because she didn't want to experience all that pain and suffering to still have the cancer and the arthritis.
My mom called this morning to say the doctors gave her a two week window to live.
Apparently, the plan is to have her cremated, but I was wondering, with her conditions, whether or not donating her body to research would be the wisest course of action. She won't. Believe it or not, she's way too modest to let people poke around her body. Heck, she won't even let people take pictures of her.
Life gave my aunt the short end of the stick. It really did. Due to her arthritis she never really had a career even though she was training to be a paramedic when her hands got so bad she couldn't hold a glass much less a syringe or more technical equipment. She was married once, but divorced before I was born. To the best of my knowledge, I never met the guy. I remember, when I was a kid, she had a boyfriend and was happy for a while. Turns out, he was a loser who emptied their joint bank accounts and took off in the night, taking their brand new car with him.
The last I heard he wrapped it around a pole while driving drunk. She was still making payments to protect her credit.
Unfortunately, her body being as sick as it was most of her life, she didn't have any friends of her own. She couldn't or wouldn't leave the house unless family was visiting or for those few trips to see movies in the theater. Books were her escape and her "shows" were her friends.
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| She'll Hate This Picture |
My aunt was on social security most of her life, as well as Medicare or Medicaid. Or both. She even qualified for the "Obama" phone. Florida, being a Tea Party state told her she should go get a job.
As I already stated, she was married once, but never had any children of her own. Instead, she doted on me and my brother and a few other nieces and nephews. And while she was always caring, she wasn't always the nicest person to be around. As a child I didn't make the connection, but as an adult I can see where the pain might have been too bad or the medications might have been having side effects.
She fell in love with Rufus when I was down there last and I'd hoped to bring him down with me to cheer her up, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen either. As it is, getting down there will be tough. I don't have a lot of extra money laying around.
This will be hardest on my mom. My aunt moved in with my mother after I'd already left for the Army. Grandma was already living there. In 2006 my grandmother died. A couple of years later my uncle died of some sort of intestinal cancer. He was the youngest of my mom's siblings. When I was younger, two other brothers of my mother died. And now her sister whom she's shared a home with most of her life.
As I said, I'll be heading to Florida soon to try and see her one more time while she's still alive. According to my brother, the plan is to bring her ashes to Colorado and spread them around on Pike's Peak.
When I was 14 or 15, we came to Colorado for a vacation. My aunt, naturally, tagged along. I think it was one of the last true vacations she ever took. It wasn't a family reunion or a death or anything else, it was just a trip to Colorado. We drove up to the top of Pike's Peak and she looked out over the clouds. There's a picture of my aunt standing on the edge of the Earth, clouds spread out before her, at my mother's house. it's one of few pictures of her since her arthritis set in.
That is how I want to remember her, not the woman who's body failed her, leaving her confined to a chair and then finally killed her for no good reason.
There will probably be more to this post as I remember things to add, but this is the second time I typed this out (the first not saving) and I can't be sure I said everything needing to be said.
A call from my mom this morning said my aunt might not live to see this weekend. So, I'm flying down to Florida tomorrow with an open return date.
ADDENDUM: I just learned a few minutes ago that my aunt died in her sleep. I'm still heading to Florida but no so urgently as before when I'd hoped to catch her alive.
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