Found out yesterday that my step-mom has lung cancer. It seems her breast cancer has come back with a vengeance, but has now decided to attack her lungs.<\/p>\n
She has not been given a good prognosis. In fact, she has been given a year with chemotherapy. It’s possible that she could live longer, but it’s not likely.<\/p>\n
My step-mom is a special lady. You see, I find myself putting the qualifier “step” in front of “mom”, but the reality is that she was my mom. I called her mom and though we didn’t always see eye to eye, we eventually accepted each other as family. Strange how bonds can form from the least likely links.<\/p>\n
It’s important to note that I didn’t have a “normal” childhood. My father stole me from my mother when I was very young, and so I never had contact with my mother (we eventually reunited when I was 25). My father was and is a merchant seaman. He works on large ships as a marine electrician. What that meant for me was that I basically grew up with whomever was his current wife or whomever he was paying to take care of me at the time.<\/p>\n
My current step-mom married my dad when I was 14. (I say current because she is, in fact, my third step-mom and my seventh caretaker.) As you can imagine it was a turbulent time for me. It was made all the more turbulent when my father was forced to move to Brazil because of a legal matter. So at the age of 15 I was without any blood relatives living near me. It was just me, my step-mom, and my step-sister. I lived there until I left for Orlando seven years later. Seems like a lifetime ago.<\/p>\n
So my step-mom is dying. She is still cheerful and somehow still slips a few jokes into conversation. Like I said… she’s a special lady. And people wonder where I get my jovial manner. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
Now I have to find out how work will accommodate me leaving for an extended period of time if that becomes necessary. I should be able to telecommute from anywhere. There aren’t any technical hurdles that I can’t overcome. It just depends on how much my boss is willing too bend company policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Found out yesterday that my step-mom has lung cancer. It seems her breast cancer has come back with a vengeance, but has now decided to attack her lungs. She has not been given a good prognosis. In fact, she has been given a year with chemotherapy. It’s possible that she could live longer, but it’s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-friends","category-my-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1175,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/1175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}