A Death Nearby

This post is about my sister's Death. This won't be the only post about it . . . but this will serve as the reason why I am starting this blog anew. Because I think about where she died. Her bed was facing this great arched window which faced the street . . . where people walk their dogs or push their baby carts on their way to the Sunday street market. How could they know that my sister was dying a few feet away from them.

(My mother also dies in this house but she died in my parents' master bedroom. There were French doors there but she didn't face her much loved garden. She was facing their tiny bathroom.)

She didn't see them, of course. In the 2 weeks since she came home from the nursing home, her attention was on the television. She liked HOUSE, I LOVE LUCY and FRAZIER.

It has been nearly 4 months since my twin died. She died on the hottest day of the year. August 30-- at 6:30pm. She died in our living room on a hospital bed provided by Kaiser Hospice. I was giving her morphine with a syringe because she was in a coma by then. (You put it under their tongue because they can't swallow.) She hated morphine . . . it tastes very bitter, I am told. And she would rather have the pain than the taste of it. It must be very bad indeed.

She was diagnosed with clear cell carcinoma a month prior to her death. I had been aware of her hip pain (which she attributed to arthritis) and her incontinence (which she attributed to diabetes.) It was neither of those things.  It was the cancer now attached to her hip and her bladder -- the tumor was the size of a grapefruit by then. It had been going on for some months. And she was constantly on the forums finding innocuous reasons for her condition. She also had rectal bleeding and blood in her urine. She diagnosed herself as having hemorrhoids. I don't think she told her doctor about the bleeding. She got a diagnosis of bladder infection. She was happy with that but of course, that didn't work.

She was losing so much weight by then, she would weigh herself everyday . . . like I did. I had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. And I was trying to lose weight. She was trying to gain weight even though she had lost her appetite. (She was only eating fruit and an occasional pizza.) She went back to the doctor via ambulance. That Sunday morning, she lost sensation in her left arm. The medics thought it might be a mini-stroke since she could feel her arm again by the time they came. That was when they found the cancer.

It has metastasized. It was in her bladder in her left hip, her stomach and there were floating nodules in her lungs. She refused treatment; I don't even know what sort of therapy they offered for this advanced stage but she was having none of it. They did not identify the cancer until the second week. Clear cell carcinoma was so rare . . . a totally random cancer, they said. At 51, with her 52nd birthday, 2 months away. She had just retired from the law library -- November 2012. She didn't even get to enjoy a year.