I haven't seen my older sister for a few years but I still have close and regular contact with her via online Scrabble and in particular, the Scrabble messaging system. We are neither of us particularly bothered to see each other in person as we have plenty to share about in writing and neither of us is very face-to-face oriented.
My current concern relates to the distinct likelihood that her breast cancer (triple negative, stage 3, treated up to about March last year) has come back in her bones. Her Scrabble moves have become much less frequent in the last ten days or so. I know she said she was due to see her cancer specialist last week some time, about a bone scan she'd had many weeks earlier. She sounded rather resigned to the long wait, as if there was little point hurrying treatment for secondaries if her pain did indeed emanate from them. Her arm pain started goodness knows how many months ago now, and she ignored it in the hope that it was something to do with her mastectomy (from the original tumour, in '16) and the stress it might have put on that side. She said she'd thought about having a second mastectomy anyway because she really didn't find it too pleasant having only the one breast.
We have had several exchanges on Twitter about politics, not in agreement at all, but we both knew we had differing views. However lately her tweets have also become less frequent.
I may be making the wrong assumptions but I wouldn't be at all surprised if any time I heard that she'd died. Having been in nursing, she might well have gained access to some powerful painkillers, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had used a big lot to get over the increasing pain, maybe with half an intention of ending it all. We had 'talked' quite a bit about our own deaths over the years, as well as our parents' and sister's and some others.
You may ask why I haven't asked her point blank where she is with all this. I just know her well enough, and know her general approach of late. Getting bossy and interventionist isn't the way to go now, I'm sure of it. I've told her I love her in spite of our considerable diffs and I've changed my tone on Twitter to one of finding common ground and RTing stuff she's tweeted which I can go along with. FB also.
She turned back to Buddhism (as well as her continued communism, although she naturally considers herself sort of 'centre left'!) since recovering from her first nine months of treatment, and I got sense she was really appreciating her new lease of life. She'd moved to another part of the country and was enjoying living by the sea.
It is still very hard to get my head around her likely very limited life now. She's 63. She might be in denial and just keep going on for as long as she can without any more treatment and maybe without any more acknowledgement of her illness. I wouldn't blame her either, I might be similar in that way.
She is married with a daughter in her thirties, and step-children and a number of grandchildren/stepgrabdchildren. Sadly her daughter distanced herself considerably from her about twenty months ago, and I still find that very hard to understand. But she did lose her mother-in-law to cancer just after my sister started her treatment, in summer '16, and she her partner had two small children, so everything might just felt like too much. Understandable, but painful for my poor sis. However, I think they have sort of partially made up since last summer.
Anyway, sorry to go on. I'm just very sad at the prospect of losing my sis, a lifelong, very dear friend.
Narrow miss. Bus and student on his mobile
Army horses loose on London streets
