Cancer

I'm back from Ohio.

My sister-in-law has pancreatic cancer.

We found out at the beginning of last week and started making plans to visit. We go to Ohio at least once a year, taking turns driving. We were not sure how long we were going to be there, though we are planning to be going back to visit over the next few months.

My wife has a closely knit family: before her mother passed away a few years ago, my mother-in-law, her husband, one of their daughters and their daughter's daughter--my niece--all lived together.

My mother was confined to a wheelchair with an oxygen tank. After I married her daughter, my mother-in-law started to lose weight--I used to joke with her that I was not sure if I should take that as a sign of approval or not--and her doctor said that if she lost enough, he would be able to repair her shoulders, both of which were broken. He never was able to and she could not raise her hands above her head. For a while, she was able to walk without the wheelchair or oxygen, with some help.

She suffered a number of strokes and heart attacks. She died twice and was revived. Once she suffered from an embolism. It just so happened that at that time a specialist was at the hospital demonstrating a procedure he had developed. He performed the procedure on her and she recovered.

One time we were visiting her in intensive care--she looked awful and was connected by tubes and wires to machines. While talking to her, I mentioned the word 'lumber': for no apparent reason, she burst out in uncontrollable laughter. Lights started blinking and  alarms went off. A nurse ran into the room. When I tried to explain, she gave me a very dirty look. The laughing must have done her good, because my mother-in-law recovered. 

She lived long past the time her doctors had given her.

My father-in-law was always pushing my mother-in-law in her wheelchair.

He has a broken back.

My father-in-law had a farm, and after selling it became a contractor: he fell off a roof and broke his back.

After he was able to walk again--he went back to contracting.

He fell of a roof a second time--he finally retired.

Since that time, he has built for my wife and me bookshelves, cabinets, a standing closet...basically he has done more with a broken back than I could possibly do.

My sister-in-law, the one with cancer, has epilepsy.

She gets seizures, occasionally grand Mal seizures.

Her daughter has cerebral palsy, with other complications.

For years, the 4 of them lived together.

I would think they had every reason to feel miserable--both for themselves and for living with each other.

They had every reason to complain--but they did not.

They were a family, and I never felt like an intruder or uncomfortable staying with them.

Like I said, my mother-in-law passed away a few years ago.

My sister-in-law has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer: she has been told that it has progressed so far that chemotherapy and radiation therapy will not help.

That leaves my father-in-law and my niece.

Together, here was a family that was greater than the sum of its parts--exponentially so.

In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I am no longer so sure Tolstoy was right about happy families.
And the key is not how families are unhappy, but how they deal with it--how they fight it, and in that regard families in general, and this one in particular, is different.

I'm not counting my father-in-law and niece out.

Technorati Tag: Cancer and Family.