A New Kind of Blog Exchange

Catherine over at Her Bad Mother is hosting a betchfest this weekend. It is the chance for people to post things that they feel they can't say on their own blogs. Today I am hosting the always popular and much quoted "anonymous". Her thoughts are below...feel free to comment and I will forward any comments along to her.

Tomorrow, we will spend the majority of the day at my in-laws,
having the traditional Labor Day cookout to mourn the end of summer. And it
will take every ounce of self-control I have not to explode and yell at
somebody.

The center of many conversations will be my brother-in-law, who still
lives at home with his parents because of a lifetime of health problems. I've known other people with the same health issues that BIL has, all of whom managed to use their college degrees to get jobs and apartments and manage to be contributing members of society, but that's too much to expect of poor BIL. Life has just dealt him to much of a bad hand to expect him to
step up and think of anyone but himself.

BIL has been dealt a blow recently, in the form of a virus that is exacerbated by the medication he has to take. As a result, he will need to forgo taking his regular, necessary medication while being treated for the virus. For most people, this situation would be cause for some concern. For our family, though, it's a sign of the apocalypse. Because, of course, everyone is convinced of the worst, that going off of the medication for even a short time will mean that his condition will worsen to the point that he might not feel as though he can fight anymore.

I feel awful for the things that have happened to BIL, I really do. But his lack of perspective has ripped me apart over the seventeen years I've been with my husband. While I was facing
a battery of exams to try to diagnose my increasing incidence of vertigo and syncope, my in-laws barely gave a second thought. BIL was going through a break-up at the time (except, only sort of, because the 'relationship' had never been anything more than friendship on her part and he tried to turn it into something else and drove her away) and his well being was paramount. He gets depressed, you know, and needs to be watched over, lest his fragile ego not be able to handle another hit. He feels like people abandon him because of his medical conditions, and you know that's not fair for anyone to do- it's not his fault he's got health issues, and no one should hold that against him!

Besides, there was no use fretting over my condition until we knew it was something serious. Right now, one of my closest friends if in the midst of what may be a cancer diagnosis. She's got a growth that is being removed soon (a needle biopsy might have resulted in a false negative, based on how large the mass is) in an area in which a slight miscalculation by the surgeon could cause some pretty major damage overall. The statistics are actually pretty good; the cancer, if it really is cancer, is of the more treatable type and there don't seem to be any other growths. And my in-laws know that this is happening and that I am worried, but brush it off, since it is so minor (in their minds) compared to the fact that we know something is wrong with BIL right now. After all, my friend's mass might not be cancer at all, and even if it is, it's being caught early with lots of chance for recovery.

The reason I need to post this so anonymously is that I've gotten to a point that is pretty dark. Throughout every backslide, every time there is a hurdle, BIL begins to get morose and swears that he's not sure he can handle anything else. That maybe, this time, he's going to just let nature do what it's doing and he will refuse the next treatment. That he's not sure he's strong enough to handle the toll on his body caused by all these medications and treatments and such. And, of course, no one really wants that to happen, no one wants him to give up.

Except, maybe I do. He's nearly 40 years old, and if he really can't handle another treatment, because in all honesty, he's gone through more crap in his 39 years than many people need to in their entire lives, he has every right to say that enough is enough. And the angst that he brings to every instance takes a toll on the rest of us as well, even if what he is facing is something that would be ignored by any of the rest of us (case in point: I've had 8 precancerous moles removed in the course of three summers without any discussion, since my dad's had a number of basal cell carcinomas over the years; when the dermatologist told BIL earlier this year that he had to
have a spot removed (again, carcinoma), the family went into a tailspin because he's got cancer. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to determine if the quality of life he has here is really worth the fighting.