400th Hub in 6 Months

As I write this hub to you I have finished my 400^thhub. And perhaps it is now time to share with you how I came to write on Hubpages. My Mother died after suffering from rectal cancer for two years. It was a surprise as the local Hospital wrote her a letter of medical clearance and sent it through the mail. So apparently the word remission doesn’t mean remission at all. This is/was a terrible lose for my son and me. More tragedic is my son is non verbal with Autism and medical complexities. I have a lot of responsibilities just with my son alone as the local hospital is either unwilling or unable to learn about his rare disorder. We also live in a community that is so ignorant that they believe Autism and rare disorders are only given to parents with bad karma. I, of course, would be exceptionally angry about this if I just didn’t feel like they were heartless stupid people. And the United States government and in particular the Republican Party in the state of Florida has done everything within their power to go after parents of children with Autism so they don’t have to provide services for them. They would prefer to buy bombs to drop on other countries.

Besides me, my son only had my Mom. And we were all she had.

Cancer care was incredibly hard. Although I was told my Mother’s prognosis was excellent and she was medically clear I still had to feed her 3,200 calories a day and she was less than 100lbs. Quite literally when you are making that many calories for another human being everything else goes. I had to do all the shopping, all the cooking and all the cleaning by myself. We were denied Hospice continually. I had to keep track of the medicines I knew about which were quite a few. I had to put up with behavior that was malicious because my Mother was secretly taking heavy duty narcotics which had I known about I would have been compelled to leave the house for my son’s sake. I kept journals everyday which was hard because I could barely find time to feed myself let alone write down everything. And then by the fourth month my Mom found out about the journals and became exceptionally paranoid and forced me to stop writing them. There was nothing really personal in them but dietary notes and biochemical assumptions about the origins of cancer and research but my Mother hated I was taking notes as it made her feel less then human. Per her request I stopped.

In the last several months of her life I kept insisting on having Hospice called in and she believed her oncologist and the note from the Hospital that she was in fact well and didn’t need hospice. I literally remember my back feeling as if it was breaking from taking care of her and my son all day.

My Mom wanted good food since she had to eat so I had to prepare French food for her every single meal.

Sometimes a friend would stop by and seeing me lying down in the middle of the day. They would say something to the effect what is wrong with you? But they didn’t understand it was a night and day thing 24/7 for two years and I was alone with a child with complex medical needs and autism. So I rested when I could and when I had to be up I would be. I quite literally felt I was Ellie Weizel in a labor camp in Nazi Germany. But then I thought about it at least he got out.

This went on and on and on for years. I didn’t see anyone nor did I do anything for myself but worked. And no one helped. Perhaps because my Mother forbid me to talk about her cancer because it was rectal cancer. As a good daughter, I didn't tell anyone until after she died so I went through all of this in silence.

The last several months of my Mother’s life she was so cruel to both my son and me, I no longer recognized her. My Mom and I had always been best friends. We had done everything together. I always helped her and she tried to help me.

We all lived to make my son a wonderful stable home. Every single day we got up with that goal and worked.

So as my Mom died it was such a shock I lost my memory. I am a person who reads a book once and has it memorized. I couldn’t remember to take the trash out, to feed myself or even to pay my bills. I would have to make lists to remind myself.

To add insult to injury Hospice refused grief counseling services for my son and myself. The entire medical community ran and hid. I think malpractice needs to come back with a vengeance. No one should ever be told they are in remission with Cancer and then die three months later. And it wasn’t just the cancer. Mom had a wound that was habitually infected which everyone just kept saying it was drainage from radiation. She would cut herself and bleed all over the house. Then at times her colostomy bag would fall off and I would have to clean it up as well. I think I cleaned up every bodily fluid my Mother had. I cleaned some solid ones as well.

So I didn’t know how to heal myself. I lost my Godfather when I was in my early twenties but no one has ever died in my immediate family. Oh and I had a step sibling commit suicide but my former steps are ravaged with addictions and mental illness so it wasn't really a surprise. But it all hit me at once. I lost a dear friend who was both a Cornell graduate and Harvard graduate of Liver and Pancreatic cancer. Then I lost my Mother and in the same week I lost my 96 year old friend.

So I had to find a new beginning. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t work as I have a medically complex child to care for full time and the state of Florida has refused him the waiver. Rick Scott may have won the lawsuit claiming it is legal to discriminate against the disabled but he has lost the public relations war. My son was supposed to be left my Mother’s life insurance but she died six days after the policy lapsed and we were denied. Of course had the hospital had hospice in the home like I had been requesting then it would have been avoidable but they refused.

I had never experience such an complete and utter collapse of civilization as in the medical community caring for my Mother and ultimately my and my son’s fate while caring for her. As a scientist I have 5% doubt and I work hard. I try inflicting the least amount of damage I can. I would have never been so irresponsible when caring for someone else’s loved one. And I should mention that we had politicians calling from DC every other day while my Mother had cancer talking about the death panels of Barack Obama. So as many times as I asked my Mother to gracefully accept her fate she insisted I was not a doctor and that Hospice kills people.

The Tea Party should be ashamed of themselves.

So I had to come up with a plan to heal myself. I needed to at least work even if I was not paid. If I worked then at least I was putting that out into the universe for all to see. But I have to be honest with you I was so devastated by my Mother’s death I couldn’t remember which day the trash was collected. I was on lists so I did the one thing that came naturally to me which was write.

I am also an oil painter and when my Mother was a live I had oil painted for 4 years. But after her death, I was to devastated to oil paint. I have lost that ability. Of course not having five minutes to myself for the last several years hasn’t really helped me collect myself or my thoughts enough to oil paint. I am always keeping my eyes on my son. So from one minute to the next I am up doing something with him. It is very hard to concentrate on anything when you are devastated catastrophically, haven’t had a day off in at least three years two of which were dedicated to end stage cancer care and are constantly being interrupted. So I have lost my ability to paint. I would have lost my ability to write but I am German and as such a subject and a verb made a sentence to me. By no means did I begin writing on hubpages with my best work for the aforementioned reasons but I did begin. And as I wrote I found my mistakes and I fixed a lot of them and I continued writing. With each article I am improving slowly but surely. When I write those moments of despair dissipate. I have felt despair so long I am not certain I will ever feel happiness again. But I see glimpses of moments without despair when I write and correspond on hubpages. So hubpages is my grief counseling. And writing is how I am healing myself and trying to go on.

You don’t want to go on when you lose someone close to you that you love. The last six months of my Mother’s life when I knew she hated me for not being able to save her, I felt as if I was dying as well. Now I recognize that my existence as my Mother’s daughter is dead and not me. I brought my Mother with me on this adventure on Hubpages as JT Walters was her name and this domain name is a living memorial to her. Everyone who didn’t do anything decided I and my autistic son were not allowed to attend the funeral. They didn’t give a damned about my Mother in her life time but only ran the show once she was dead?

So I have a lot of healing to do in a community that ignores the plight of children with Autism or attacks their family unit to dodge providing services which they are funded to do. It is also a community that neglected my Mother and made me care for her alone without any help for two years.

And with each article I move closer to establishing myself as another person. I am painfully shedding the skin of being my Mother’s first daughter and becoming my own person. In those moments when I write I am relieved of my grief but for a short time. I try to tell myself this will all make a great book one day but the truth is I will never actually be able to tell you everything thing that happened because much of it was illegal. Dying people have no fear of committing crimes as they are dying so jail is not much of a threat. I would never want to be responsible for someone bing victimized by ever repeating what has happened. That was why Hospice was supposed to get involved in order to minimize the social impact of death. But two oncologists declined to provide those services and my son and I have been tremendously harmed by this failure.

Reluctant to start a new without my Mother, I started setting goals for myself. I would research ten stories at a time and then I would write outlines of what I thought was relevant and pertinent to my audience. I didn’t limit myself except for the fact that I would not publish fictional stories or technical writings because I have publications in those areas and I was afraid I might accidentally duplicate something and infringe on a copyright. I couldn’t remember simple things and therefore I might inadvertently make this mistake. So diligently I strived to avoid it.

• I set goals both short term and long term.
• I conducted research on ten articles write the outlines, downloaded the pictures and the wrote the next morning.
• I lived by the Motto, “Contribute”. So when I could publish I did and when I encountered writer’s block I sat down and read all of my favorite author’s work.
• I answered all of my comments and wasn’t afraid to disagree with my commenter’s. I am not gaming people for posts. I like them and appreciate ratings, vote’s up and comments. I look forward to them in fact but it is not a con. I truly appreciate and value everyone’s input so I take every comment under careful advisement and sometimes debate points that my reader has brought out. This features the commenter and their points of view and is a way to drive traffic to them. It is a compliment as long as it doesn’t get nasty.
• I have pushed myself beyond what I thought I would be able to do. I have branched into poetry which I am studying as I am composing. I am a novice and I will enjoy looking back on it one day if I do not cringe.
• I try to write with purpose. What am I contributing with this article is always the question I ask myself? For instance this article illustrates how writing can heal your soul after a catastrophic event.

Although I cried a bit writing this and the holidays are going to be really hard on us, I am improving. I might be able to add an adjective in my writing now and my writing is getting a bit better. My memory is beginning to come back but I am still making lists like crazy just in case. For the last year we have been surviving death and after the year anniversary of my Mother’s death I hope we will be in a better place. Her birthday is shortly after so it should be a rough go. But if we make it, I will be only be able to report that as I go..

And what will my new existence look like? I have absolutely no idea. I don’t know if I will ever get my memory back fully. My son and I may need to take a vacation for a bit to get away and relax but our finances will not currently allow for such endeavors.

What I am certain about is that there is no going back. I can only move forward. I work everyday to heal myself from something that almost destroyed me to a state of health with only my laptop and my dear friends on hubpages.

And you all are probably wondering why I didn’t get out sooner and make everyone else care for our Mother. First rectal cancer is a very delicate private place to have cancer and my Mother only trusted me. And second no one else would help her. Without having access to Hospice, I would have had to abandon my dying sick elderly Mother to neglect. I couldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t do that to her. I had every intention of pulling my son and myself out of caring for her in the last six months of her life when Hospice should have been called in so we could spend quality time together instead of changing bandages, colostomy bags and begging her to eat the French delicacies I made her. But since the doctors’ refused to call Hospice we were also denied the last six months of a dignified death.

It was very clear to me and my son, my Mother was dying and everyone else had no clue. My son was exploding emotionally because he couldn’t understand why his Nana was being neglected by her healthcare providers while she dying. And he is a non verbal autistic person. Quite frankly I couldn't understand why they didn't know she ws dying either. It was baffling to say the least. I had to deal with debt collectors demanding I pay my Mother’s medical bills.

So I am writing for a new beginning and the amount I have written in this amount of time is due to discipline and regimen with the ambition of healing my soul.

With this hub I will have completely roughly 2 ½ years of work on hubpages. Before the year is out I hope to complete 3 years or 468 hubs. Given my recent acquisition of knowledge about poetry I might actually be able to pull this off. While I am not rolling in money or Amazon coupons yet I hope to be soon. I am cautiously optimistic about my writing future. As I am two and a half years closer to a writing career than I was six months ago. I doesn’t take way the grief but is a great distraction from my pain.

On November 21st of 2011 I will have written for hubpages for exactly six months. I never though it would have lasted so long or been so productive.

To everyone who has read and followed me you are my angels carrying me out of hell. I am so thoroughly grateful to all of you. Thank you. You are more than you know to me.

I have contributed a lot to this community for the last six months. I was glad to do so but I am going to take a short break now as it is a bit much to almost finish 3 years of work in 6 months. I am 68 hubs from completing 3 years of work.

I have put a lot of good energy out into the world with all the work I have done here. And while every single person who has read, commented and rated has sent good energy back to me I will be waiting for my big break now.

When I add it all up. It is about 800 pages of text I have written in the last six months or roughly two books. So perhaps a few weeks off will do me some good and I will enjoy reading all my fellow hubbers' work.