Just wanted to explain why I've been absent for a few months. Only lurking here and there, and replying 'out of the blue' to a few posts, but not really speaking up about what was really going on.

As some of you may know, my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer last summer/fall and I was doing my best to be in two places at once - I made a commitment to be there for each and every one of my Mom's chemo treatments, even though this meant leaving my DH and beloved doggie behind for weeks at a time.

Final round of the worst of the chemo treatments was on December 31st of last year - New Year's Eve. There's still more chemo ( a year's worth), but the really heavy-duty stuff was completed by the end of December 2013.

Meanwhile, on December 30th, my Grandpa was admitted to the ER with unexplained bleeding ....he died five days later. It turned out he had acute myeloid leukemia, and not just a "flu" that he thought he'd picked up on a cruise he went on in November. It was all kinds of disastrous - I'm an only child, and my Mom is the main caregiver for my grandparents, only she was battling breast cancer and chemo treatments at the same time this was all going on.

In that one week between Christmas and New Years, I spent hours upon hours in the chemo ward, the ER, talking to various doctors - it was really, really tough. In the end, I spent the week of New Years in the chemo ward, the ER, the morgue and the chapel. Funeral homes, oncology appts., blood tests, dealing with wills and executor stuff that was all left to my Mom.

It's like this - Mom is going through chemo and having nasty side effects and her FIL dies a few days later. She finds out she's the executor for Grandpa and power of attorney for my step-grandma (who has dementia). She can barely just sort of 'get by' because of the horrible chemo side effects. Having to go to the funeral home, and I'm supplying a bucket to take in the car, in case she throws up.

Things like going to the lawyers office, and my Mom having horrible bone pain and headaches because of the Neupogen shots she had to have post-chemo. These shots were to help stimulate her bone marrow to produce more white blood cells (neutrophils). My Grandpa got so sick and passed away so quickly. Mom's chemo was on a Tuesday and Grandpa died on Saturday.

I just wanted to say that it has taken me awhile to sort of get my bearings, and it did take a few weeks after returning home to get the "chemo ward" out of my head, not to mention weird things like having to go to the morgue to see my Grandpa because step-Grandma wasn't there at the hospital when he passed away and wanted to see him one last time. We all gathered together at the hospital morgue just a few days after Mom's chemo treatment to see him. It was awful....

I've never been to a morgue before, and I don't recommend it.

Then, to make matters even worse - Mom got the flu from hanging around the hospital too much (due to FIL's illness). She was instructed not to go anywhere else in the hospital outside of the chemo ward, due to her white blood cell count being trashed from the chemo, but there was no way she wasn't going to visit her FIL in hospital. A chemo patient getting the flu is a big deal - these people don't have the resources/white blood cell counts to fight off these things, and there is the worry of neutropenia. She had gotten her flu shot, but the flu shot doesn't work so well in people undergoing chemotherapy treatments. This meant urgent appts. at the local clinic, bloodwork, plus antibiotics and so on. Fear of "neutropenia." Scary.

The whole thing has been horrible, to put it mildly.

I know it's April now, but it's only now that I've had the wherewithal to post anything. Mom has two more weeks of radiation - and six more months of 'targeted' chemo (Herceptin).

Meanwhile, so much happened this past winter that I can't even begin to explain it all. Stupid things like coming home from the morgue (brutal), only to find that my parent's roof was leaking - and it's pouring rain. Me and my step dad up on the roof in the pitch black darkness, flinging a tarp over the roof, calling roofers while Mom is trying not to throw up, battling bone pain and just trying to get by. I'm doing everything in my power to take good care of my Mom, and everything seems to be going horribly wrong. Grandpa gets sick with what seems like the flu, and it turns out to be acute myeloid leukemia. I still can't believe it.

I think of my Grandpa every day, and miss him telling us that the scones are awful, that the tea isn't quite right and that the newspapers aren't doing their job. That no one knows how to make a proper Yorkshire pudding these days, and that it's ridiculous that he should have to pay 5 cents at Superstore for a plastic shopping bag. That if you were a real business, you'd have a fax number on your website.

I've lurked and posted maybe only a couple of things, but I'm still here and YLF always manages to cheer me up, even when things aren't going so well.

Sorry for the long post - I'm not good at keeping things to a reasonable length:) Just wanted to speak up and say that I'm still reading when I can, and how much I enjoy this place, even though I'm not the best at participating these days.