A metaphor

You know when you're on the highway? Or on a long straight road? And the car you are in starts speeding up? The lamp posts start off as distinct entities. You can say "look, here comes a lamp post." Then wait a bit for the next. Then as the car starts to go faster the lamp posts come a bit sooner. Then as the car goes into "really big ass ticket and points off your license" territory the lamp posts become a blur, like one big lamp post or like they have disappeared all together.

This is what illness is like.

Specifically long term cancer.

My mother is still in the hospital. It is unclear to me whether the blood clots in her lungs are as a side effect from some therapeutic anti-cancer thing or if they are some new fun of metistatic breast cancer but she is going to be there for at least a week. This sucks on a number of levels:

1. It is my completely non scientific opinion that sick people get sicker in hospitals.
2. This means, barring some amazing miracle, she will have to carry oxygen down the aisle at my sister's wedding.

So, my metaphor, when you are sick with something serious, the lamp posts are very separated. In my mom's case they weren't super far apart, but they were at least distinct events (breast cancer, "stroke-like incident" related to chemo followed by bowel perforation due to a reaction to the steroids she took after the "stroke-like incident"). But lately, with all (try and follow this) the treatments, and treatments for the side effects from the treatments and the treatments for the stress of the treatments and the treatments for other non-cancer problems (and the treatments for the side effects from the treatments for other non-cancer problems) the lamp posts are coming fast and furious.

Like any fast ride everyone involved is scared witless and none of us really want to think about the destination we're racing towards.