Death Is At My Door

  My first cousin, Patty, was diagnosed with cervical cancer last year. She had a reaction to Coumadin, a blood thinner, and developed a large blister, covering the whole left calf. The doctors chose to stop the chemo until her leg healed. They had to wait on it to bust on its own, which took a while. Then they did a skin graft and had to wait  on that to heal. In the mean time, the cancer kept growing and growing. It moved into her lymph nodes and where else? By the time her leg was healed the cancer blocked nodes and it caused massive swelling in her legs. I got a call from her the other night and she told me that she wanted me to take her to UAB er. When we got there it was packed. I asked the nurse how much longer and she told me there were 35 ahead of her. I told the nurse that I new what triage meant and she was gonna have to go next. The drive from Gadsden to Birmingham was about an hour and we sat in the ER for another 2 hours. When I told the nurse I asked her to come look at Patty's feet. Well, she looked and decided that we were next. We were seeing the doctor, soon. Patty was admitted and I just learned that because of the delay in waiting for her leg to heal it only gave time for the cancer to progress. She told me that the doctors have given her a couple months to live.
 Somebody dropped the ball, here. They should have known that by waiting on the leg to heal, the cancer had to spread. Hell, even I know that. I would rather lose a leg than my life. See, Patty has not done anybody wrong. Why does she have to lose her life? She is a good person that has been dealt a shitty hand. Here I am, no use to society, and I am living. I have a fucked-up mental disease and she gets the death sentence. What is fair about that? It ain't fair. Who makes these life and death decisions, anyway. It's fucked-up, if you ask me. And there ain't nobody asking.   theblogmeister