Showing entries for: Patient Voice
Summary of 114th Congress, Lame Duck Session
When my mother suffered a hemorraghic stroke in August 2008, we could not find her living will for two days. Now my mom had watched her own father die a lingering death, his body tied to a hospital bed by tubes, IV’s and a catheter while he hung in a tenuous coma for over a month. Mom had sat by my grandfather’s hospital bed the entire time, watching her father fade as the medical staff moved constantly in and out of the room to tweak the dials delivering the medication that kept him in delicate balance between life and death.
Early April – Opening Day, April 6th actually – I wake up with really bad back pain. I figured that it was related to sleeping funny the night before, one kid had slept on one side of me and the other on the other side and I couldn’t move. We walked all over downtown that day and it was all I could do, and this was after taking Tylenol or Motrin or something which may not seem like a big deal but I never was one to take much medication. It wasn’t better within a day or so and I then attributed it to picking up my children and working in the yard etc., all the things we attribute back pain to.
Between “moment of silence” and “prevention of cancer from spreading,” exists the land of the forgotten. Who resides there? Those for whom I am a #FearlessFriend, those hoping their names will not be mentioned with the former, and, yes, those who have already been kicked out of the ranks of the latter. Their cancer has already spread. Where do they fit into the current breast cancer paradigm? Do they fit in at all?
At age 35, Lori was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer. She was a young wife and mother of a then three-year-old son. About ten months ago, ten years after her initial diagnosis, she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. This is a post from her thoughtfully-written blog, Regrounding, about where she’s at now. With her gracious permission, we republish it here.
