Weekend

I’ll warn you now that this is an insanely dull post, but I needed to vent, because I have had the most emotionally draining weekend ever.


On Friday my Nanna had her post surgery appointment with her surgeon. They told her that she needs to have low dose chemotherapy as a follow up treatment to make sure the cancer doesn’t return.
That was the final straw for her– she just totally lost it. All she heard was ‘chemotherapy’. She blocked out all the ‘low dose’ parts; about how different it is to regular chemotherapy; how you don’t lose your hair and most people don’t even get nauseous. She just kept telling us over and over how she didn’t want to lose her hair, and how she wasn’t going to have the treatment; that she was 81 and she wasn’t going to live forever anyway.

I spent all of Saturday with her trying to cheer her up and trying to stop her from talking herself out of having the treatment. By the end of the day she was a lot better, but it was exhausting – she’s very pessimistic at the best of times, so you can imagine that something like this had her at her peak.

I’m worried for her. Not because she needs the chemotherapy – honestly, if you met her you wouldn’t worry either. She’s one of the toughest 81 year olds you’ll ever come across. And she’s bounced back from her surgery quicker than a lot of people half her age do. I worry because she’s confused about the facts of her illness, and she might just end up getting very sick from the cancer because of something as stupid as thinking she might lose her hair because she won’t listen to the people telling her otherwise.



After a stressful Saturday, Sunday saw a couple of very close friends of mine who have been together for five years breaking up (again). They’ve split up about 5 or 6 times during the course of their relationship because they’ve known from the start it wouldn’t work out long-term. She wants to get married and have kids; he is vehemently opposed to both – to the point where he tried to get a vasectomy at age 23. They told him of course that they wouldn’t do it until he was older because a lot of people change their minds about these things. She found out about him trying and was furious – yet somehow that wasn’t enough of a warning for her that it was time to end things.

They moved in together about a year ago and that was the beginning of the end. You can’t live with someone and continue to ignore the fact that you want very different things. So Sunday was spent consoling one of them. It seems harsh, but I’m a little out of patience with their break ups. Every time they split up, I spend days comforting one or the other, only for them to get back together almost immediately.
Now when it happens, I feel as though I have nothing left to say to them. I feel as though I just want to yell at them to just get on with their lives and that they’re both better off apart.

At least this time it will probably stick, because they will be putting physical distance between themselves when she moves out.


So that was my weekend – cancer and break-ups. Not the relaxing weekend I had been hoping for.