Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Keeping track of Kristy

This past Lent, I told you about Kristy Dusseau and her yearslong struggle with a hellacious and rare cancer -- and the side effects of the treatment that saved her.

Side effects, such a sterile term that is. Side effects, which in Kristy's case meant debilitating chemotherapy. A bone-marrow transplant that saved her . . . and almost killed her. Losing her house, her job, her health, her fiancé.

Running up more than a million dollars in medical bills.

Now factor in what all of the above would do to your head. You can get up to speed here, here and here.

Well, Kristy's brother Rob -- who's been trying to raise enough money to buy Kristy a condo or to let her finish her college degree -- has been slammed at work the past few months and hasn't had the chance to do another monthly video . . . yet. But he does provide an update on his sister at www.kristyrecovers.com. Here's part of it:

Healthwise, Kristy has been doing really well. She's gained some weight and is actually starting to look like she's growing YOUNGER. That's good to see. She still has the feeding tube, but she's gone from using it 20 hours a day to once every 5 days. It leaks all of the time, whether it's being used or not, and has ruined lots of her clothing.

She sleeps a lot, gets tired after being up and around for a few hours, and has good and bad days. They've recently cut back on her steroids (she's thrilled about that), which has had her feeling ill lately as she tries to adjust to it.

Her fiancé .... well ... let's say he's fallen off a cliff, which is what Kristy would tell you if you asked her. I'm not one to judge. Really, it's something I just don't do for spiritual reasons, but that guy turned out to be a bum. His commitment to her during the first half of her illness was very commendable, and it won't be forgotten by this writer, but the guy turned into a leach onto Kristy and my family. Living with my parents, disappearing for days, drunk and disorderly all of the time, enough said about that, there's many other things but what's the point? The guy is hopefully gone for good now.

Kristy I know you really cared for Greg, but your roads have taken drastically different directions, and what he became on his path wasn't good for you. Your future spouse will be good for you, trust me on that.

Emotionally Kristy's been upset. I never reached my goal of raising enough money to purchase her a condo (which would have meant she would be eligible for a nurse). So she's living at home with mom as her nurse. That's tough on both parties involved, because of where they are in their perspective lives.

Her self image is in the gutter. Silly as it may seem, she actually thinks the fact that she can't have children will make her undesirable to men. I chuckled a bit when she told me that with tears in her eyes, and assured her that it wouldn't be a problem. Especially with men. It might be more of a problem if she were a man, but she's a very pretty young lady, and the idea of adopting makes her concern a mute one.

There's many other emotional hurdles she's climbing over right now, and she's climbing them, but I wouldn't be much help with that. I don't know what's it's like to go through something like she has. She told me she was checking out planetcancer.com and talking to people, and I hope she's still doing that. I was actually hoping she would take over this site, but that just didn't happen. She's not much of a computer fan like her brother is.
THERE WAS A BRIEF FLURRY of Internet attention focused on Kristy's plight, and the contributions rolled in for a brief while. Now, not so much so.

We Americans have the attention spans of fleas, and it's gotten worse as "progress" comes up with more and more crap to distract us from what's important. Like Kristy, who just happens to be our sister in Christ.

And she's had a damned rough go of it.

So, if you have a few bucks to spare, how about going to www.kristyrecovers.com and dropping some scratch in the kitty. Or, more importantly, drop Kristy a line just to say "Hey!" and "Hang in there!"

I mean, the Wide World of Suck could crash down upon any of our heads at any time. If it did, wouldn't you want all the help -- and friendship -- you could get?

* * *

P.S.: Hey, Kristy! Mrs. Favog had cancer some years back. We can't have kids. I still like her just fine . . . got no plans to trade her in for the new Babymaker model.

So quit yer worryin'!

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