The C Word

This isn't about racing, or anything to do with racing, but I didn't know where else to put this. 

I don't know what you're supposed to do, so I'm going to look it up after this. But I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to get angry, not at God anyway.  I think it's okay to cry, I think it's okay to ask a few questions. It doesn't feel wrong to feel hopeful, then I remember I was hopeful before I heard the news and it let me down big time. 

I found out today that my stepmom has lung cancer. And she's not your average stepmom, she's like big-time-might-as-well-be-real-family, stepmom. Like so-glad-my-dad-married-her, stepmom. Like couldn't-imagine-life-without-her stepmom. And the pneumonia that we thought was pneumonia is lung cancer. And she's a non smoker and otherwise healthy.  And so when the time came for the biopsy results I thought for sure I was gonna hear "atypical pneumonia". 

Instead I heard my dad so choked up he couldn't explain it to me over the phone. I heard fear and sadness and defeat and a glimmer of hope and it was all tangled up in the c word. 

And now it's a part of our lives, and we are all fighters and advocates. It feels like an unwelcome stranger that I've never had time for before. It was always someone else's family, someone else's sister, someone else's problem-- but this time it's MY second mom. And now it's in MY life and it really feels just shitty. And I'm mad and sad and scared and tired and the worst part is I'm helpless. And I suddenly feel bad that I could never be as empathetic to the "other people" as I feel now-- it's kind of like I get it for once, but it's the worst getting it ever. 

So now what? We pray obviously. But we get more scans and we determine a course of treatment because praise The Lord it is treatable. But then what-- do we wait?  Dad says we are going to the Grand Canyon if she wants to go. I don't care what we do, I guess I just hope we all survive. 

So maybe we just figure it out along the way. It's become so common, really, for people to be diagnosed with cancer and it makes you wonder a little bit who will be next... Because I never thought it would be this close to home and now it's here. 

I guess maybe we just become part of the cause, the movement, the fighters -- because that's what we can do and that's about it. It just feels so-- foreign. Princess on? Feels so hard.