Rubenerd Blog

I’m becoming increasinly worried about my mum. Physically she’s coping well with the chemo (well as well as you can expect her to be coping considering she’s been having it for over a decade now) but mentally I’m really scared that it’s another story entirely.

Almost her whole life now is spent either in bed or in her chair up in her bedroom and her sense of humour is fading. I really seem to rub her the wrong way and get into her bad books with her a lot more now which is really hard to get used to. I keep telling myself it’s just the drugs and chemo that’s talking not her, but it’s still unnerving.

I’m worried as well that she’s losing hope too; and it’s not surprising. The fact she almost never has any energy would be maddening. I talk of course from the point of view of someone who has never had chemo before and cannot even begin to comprehend what it would be like.

I think part of it as well stems from the press being all over people like Kylie Minogue who had to endure chemo for just over 6 months, a drop in the bucket compared to what my mum has had. Of course I’m not trying to dismiss what poor Kylie would have gone through, but you can understand my mum’s perspective.

This has been going on for more than a decade, and I think we are all just fed up. I just really hope that being fed up and frustrated doesn’t translate into giving up. From what my dad has told me she has tried to several times in the past, but has always chosen to soldier on. I love my mum as a mum but also as one of my best friends.

Given the type of cancer she has, she’ll be having chemo on and off for the rest of her life until they come up with a cure. It’s for this reason above all else that I get so amazinly angry with people like George W. Bush and John Howard when they would much rather blow people up than help fund vital medical research. I don’t remember who said it, but I remember reading a quote that went somewhere along the lines of “all money that is spent on weapons is robbery from the poor and sick”.

I’m waffling and talking politics again, so I’ll stop here. As Spike Milligan said: “the end of [the blog post] is the best place to stop writing”.