Update on Uncle

My mom and dad went to spend the weekend after Thanksgiving with my sick uncle. They had a good time and everyone was in good spirits.

When Mom got home she told me what she finally managed to drag out of my uncle's SO... They say that it won't be the cancer/tumors/whatever that is going to kill him, it'll be the loss of lung function.

Apparently his lungs have been deteriorating for quite some time (even before this mess, from what I understood) and the upper portion of his lungs isn't really functioning at all. Uncle's SO says that the doctors told him that basically, Uncle will go to sleep one night and simply not wake up because his lungs will just give out. If I understood Mom correctly (and if she understood SO right) part of what's keeping his lungs going right now is the fact that the stomach contracts too, and that it's keeping his lungs stimulated.

And somehow, this is harder to cope with than the idea of cancer. I guess with the cancer there's always the chance that treatments will work, but something like this... there's just nothing that will fix it, short of a miracle. From what I understand he's not a transplant candidate (due to cancer and a lifetime of smoking). Basically, it's a waiting game.

That really bothers me.

I don't like the wait-and-see approach.

So for the last couple days this has had me in a funk. Like I've said before he's only about 14 years older than me and it's hard to imagine someone so young dying of lung failure. I've lost young friends to illnesses not befitting their age before, but this is so random. And of course, I've said before that I feel like he's largely responsible for this because of his lifetime of smoking so it's hard to feel bad for him, exactly, but I still hate it.

I hate that of my mom's four brothers this will be the second one she's lost. Of the remaining two, one is a meth head and the other is out of his mind (remember the Baker Act uncle?) so who knows how long either of them will be around. She's got a sister (who cleaned her act up after years of living a rough life) who is doing relatively well, so that's encouraging, but all of this reminds me that my mom is 55 and well into the years where adults really start having medical problems. It reminds me that life isn't fair, because how could my aunt smoke for like 20- or 30- something years, quit cold turkey, and have little more than a touch of emphysema, but my uncle smoked for maybe a little over a decade and it's the death of him?

All of this has me worried for my mom, especially since she's without insurance.

People under 40 shouldn't die like this, just like kids shouldn't die of the horrible things they do. Just like babies and old folks shouldn't die at the hands of the people who are supposed to take care of them. Just like nobody should have to live with crippling diseases or things that wreck their quality of life or illnesses resulting from the careless actions of others.

Sorry, I'm just in a life-sucks-and-isn't-fair funk. That's the update on my uncle. Not that it's much of one, but there it is.