Saturday, July 21, 2007

Going Home, or not

Last night, I spent a couple hours scanning and touching up pictures of my brother-in-law for a video montage at his memorial service. DH is picking out the music because he and his brother are, like, a decade or more older than me, and I don't know what old people used to listen to (joking!). Anyway, ever since his brother passed away two weeks ago (holy shit--has it only been two weeks?), all the family, especially his wife, have been focused on the arrangements, thinking about what he would have liked. Got me thinking about my own death, which folks, I hate to break it to you, is going to happen--just hopefully not for another 40 years or so.

Okay, so I don't plan on dying any time soon, but here it is--NO WAY, NAH-UH, NEVER IN A MILLION LIFETIMES do I want to be buried in my hometown, Mifflintown, PA. I say that now, in front of whoever the hell is reading this--as my absolutely, positively last word on the matter. Sure, it's where I grew up, and it's pretty, and it's peaceful, and all my white family lives and dies there, but growing up there I felt so trapped in such a small town, I couldn't wait to hightail it out of there. I mean no disrespect to my family whatsoever, but they know it's not the place for me. And I want to be cremated (I am, after all, a fire sign and a wood rabbit, so back to ashes for me). As for my ashes, what to do with them, I haven't thought about that all that much yet.

Word travels fast in my small town. And my extended family takes up a big piece of the population pie there. I think by now, the whole town knows I have cancer, and my name has been uttered and shouted in prayer circles and placed into Bibles. Which is cool because shit, I need all the help I can get, even though I myself don't subscribe to any religion. If people say they are praying for me, I'll take it.

On a completely different note, DH is having second thoughts about this trial. One of the main areas of concern with this trial is that because they want tissue samples from the tumour area to see if chemo combo is causing any shrinkage, I have to do chemo first. He really wants us to consider the normal way of going about things, which is to do surgery first. So he read up on it last night, we'll call the trial nurse with our questions, and think about it some more. I want to make sure we're confident about what we're doing, cuz this ain't like buying a car or something, where we might not be satisfied with a term here or there. He's the hunter and gatherer--of information. Me? I have a boob that's hella angry with me.

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