I am going to start filtering some of my more private musings. Since blogger does not have a tool for that, you will need to visit my Live Journal and ask to be friended there. I will continue to post Daily Gratitude and other subjects here. There is also a FAQ for my Journal at the same link.
update on sister -- not happy
| Sunday, September 21, 2003 @ 09:16 After the crisis at the end of July, I try not to think about her health. Sometimes, though, it intrudes. Something told me to check my vanilla e-mail account a few days ago and there was a message from her that had arrived that day (I don't usually check the account often, I just had a feeling). Apparently the heart problem that wasn't critical at the beginning of August is now almost diagnosed as something fatal -- well, two somethings fatal, but only one is confirmed. There will be another test this coming week to confirm the second disease/condition. This one comes with a treatment that could lengthen life for a few more years. Now, what's one fatal diagnosis on top of several others, really? Especially one that comes with a possible treatment. Treat the artery so that it can continue to pump blood into the heart that has stiffening walls. All this assuming the decreasing lung capacity can survive any sort of surgery or outpatient treatment. I saw her in May and her condition wasn't happy. It's hard to imagine how severly her quality of life has dropped in the few short months since then, but I know it has. Living with the knowledge that my sister will die "someday" wasn't too difficult, after the initial realization. When you're eight years old, ten years is hard to conceive of. You just know you'll have time to prepare for it later. And then the later becomes fifteen years and twenty years. As highly functioning as my sister managed to be, it was hard to imagine her as actually dying. Next month will be 27 years since she was diagnosed with a disease that was supposed to kill her before she graduated high school. She's thirty years old and not only graduated high school, but college, and she entered a committed relationship with a man that's made her happy for years, worked several jobs in her chosen career, and bought a home that she loves. How can I believe that someone who's done all that will die anytime soon? When the lungs can't fill up and process oxygen, that's serious. When the heart walls thicken and can't hold as much blood as necessary, that's serious. If the pulmonary artery develops high blood pressure and can't pump blood properly into the heart, that's serious. When someone has all three things degenerating at once, you can't pretend any longer that "someday" is a long time. You can only hope that the quality of life doesn't deteriorate to the point that suicide looks like a pleasant option --and that you'll be able to judge when it's the final crisis and travel 1600 miles to be there in time. --and keep remembering all the wonderful things she experienced in her life in the years she wasn't supposed to have because she was too stubborn to live the way a person with a disease is supposed to live and because my parents acted on every diagnosis when she was a child and got her the treatments she needed.
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