Cancer is a bitch

went onto to Facebook this afternoon, just as a quick distraction from my work – I need to do that from time to time during the day to just refocus myself – and I found a post from a man that I’m still friends with, even though his friend and I broke up many moons ago.  His nephew is 5 years old and is battling cancer again.  This is the second or third time this kid has had it, and this time, it’s bad.  His arm broke again, his bones are brittle from all of the misc. treatments and therapies over the years.  And when they did the arm x-ray, they also did a chest x-ray to figure out why he was having trouble breathing; they thought it was pneumonia (sounds familiar).  He now has a new tumor in his lungs.  They are trying a form of chemo that they’ve used before with him that has worked; if he is resistant to the treatment, if it doesn’t work, as his mother said “we are out of options”.  To be a mother and to say that about your child, your 5 year old child no less, can be nothing less than heart wrenching.  I can’t imagine, and pray that I never will actually know, the heart break and suffering that woman is enduring knowing that she can only do so much to help her child and that she may be standing by, watching her child die slowly without having the ability to save him. A child who depends on her to kiss his boo-boos, put a band-aid on the ouchies, kiss him good-night and scare away the monsters that hide under his bed. She can’t scare away cancer; it’s the other way around I believe. 

Cancer is a horrible,  horrible disease that claims the old and the young.  It doesn’t discriminate.  It doesn’t care if you’ve had a full life, or if your life hasn’t really even begun yet; this little boy was planning on starting Kindergarten and now, it looks like that won’t be happening anytime soon.  The things that this poor kid has missed out on and now, another first will come and go without him.  He is lucky though – in at least one aspect – his family has gathered around him and won’t give up.  They will fight and fight along with him as best they can, until there is no battle to fight anymore.  And even then, I think his parents will continue to fight until there’s nothing to fight against anymore.  I pray, and I pray, and I pray, that this little life is spared.  That this family is spared.  They shouldn’t have to endure the pain of watching someone they love, a five-year old at that, pass away slowly and painfully from this horrible disease; there is no easy way to pass away once it’s in your lungs as I know all too well. They tell you that they will make that person comfortable, but there is no comfort in watching it happen.  No one should have to lose their child, no one should have to watch their loved one die from this disease and GOD no parent should have to decide to take their 5 year old off of life support and sit by their bedside, holding their hand as they die and take their last breath. I know it happens every day, I know it happens everywhere.  But when it hits home, especially when it’s such a young life, you can’t be anything but angry and just oh so very sad.