The hardest thing

So much has happened since my last post...both good and bad and I'll get to it all soon.

But it's almost 11 p.m. and I was at Piedmont Hospital for 10 hours with my sister (and let me tell you, it was an honor to be there).

I was there when the doctor (not her regular oncologist...he was on vacation) came in to tell her she had bad news about the cancer. The chemo isn't working, the cancer has grown and there is nothing else they can do. They've recommended hospice. They're trying to get Debbie's pain under control which of late seems like an impossible task... she's way beyond the chart they have hanging in the hospital room. She has a lot to think about in the next few days so we can begin to get the hospice set up and get her somewhere she'll be happy and safe and, I pray, pain-free for at least a while.

Watching her suffer and knowing how this is going to end is the hardest thing I've ever done.

Harder than us being taken away from our parents; harder than having both our parents die. I'm able to keep it together while I'm in the room with her, but if I walk out in the hall, I just fall apart. I'm so freakin' stupid, that I actually believed after all the crap we put up with in our youth, that we were somehow untouchable...it would simply be too unfair. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong.

Next post: "Right now, I don't feel like there's anything wrong with me."