What To Do?

Warning - this post is not the usual light-hearted writings of BH. It deals with a painful (for her) subject matter. If you're looking for a lift today, you'd best keep looking elsewhere. End disclaimer.

I'm at a bit of a loss here folks. First, happy Singles Awareness Day. La-dee-fucking-da. Darn Hallmark holidays. However, I have valid reasons to hate this day beyond the typical bitter, jaded woman reasons. Today is the 5 year anniversary of my mom's death. Why am I writing about this morbid topic? Well, because of some recent events.

Yesterday I had a nice phone call with my brother. My uncle (on my mom's side) had called me about a week ago with a message of, "Hey, I'm going to move forward on this. Need you to call me because my lawyer needs some things from you." I thought he was referring to some wild hair he had up his ass about buying my brother and me each a car. I thought I had talked him out of that ridiculous idea, but when I got the phone call I assumed not. I hadn't bothered to call him back because I'm not going to accept a car from him anyway.

My brother filled me in that I was wrong in my assumption. Yeah yeah, insert your "ass out of u and me" comment here. Apparently my uncle wants to sue over my mom's death. A little bit of background:

Everything with my mom started when she had a bloodclot around Thanksgiving/Christmas in 1999. All of a sudden her ankle was swollen and black and blue, but she hadn't done anything to it. She was the CIO at a local teaching hospital associated with a university. She saw the doc there and they did an ultrasound. That's when they found out she had a bloodclot. They instantly admitted her and wouldn't let her out of bed for a few days until they had everything under control. Started her on blood thinners and all the usual stuff. They eventually released her, but she had to stay on the meds. She had some more problems and was under the care of Dr. T - the head of vascular surgery at this institution.

Dr. T is the type of guy who gets off on making his residents cry. He is an A1 asshole. Really just a miserable human being. Eventually, as she continued to have problems, they did another ultrasound and found out she had a cist on one ovary and a tumor on the other. Dr. T was 99.9% sure the tumor was benign, because there would be other symptoms if it was malignant. For a period of about 6 months he wouldn't refer her to anyone else and wouldn't let anyone else work on her because he knew what was best and he knows all.

Now, what any oncologist will tell you is the reason Ovarian Cancer is so deadly is because there *aren't* other symptoms so you generally find it in the later stages. So for 6 months her tumor was growing because Dr. T's ego wouldn't let him consider any other possibility. Somehow they eventually discovered he was wrong and she saw an oncologist. We've got no beef with this guy. By the time her oncologist got her, there wasn't anything more he could have done. She underwent treatment, but lost the battle on Valentine's Day 2001.

My family doesn't believe in frivalous lawsuits. It pisses us off at all the stupid cases that make it into court these days. Is this a frivalous case? No, it's not. I haven't talked to my uncle yet so I don't know all the details. I don't know if he wants to just sue the doc or what. I don't hold anything against the institution or her oncologist. Just the arrogant prick. When my brother asked him why he wanted to do it he said something about millions of dollars for us. I think my brother put it best when he said, "It still doesn't give my little girl her grandmother." It makes me angry everytime I have to fill out a form for some distribution of money my parents left us. I don't want it! I don't want the stupid money. I want my parents back. It brings me to tears every time and I was crying on the phone with my brother. Hell, I'm crying as I type this. (bad thing to do at work!)

I have all these questions - Why now? Why wait 5 years and then do it? Is anything to be gained by doing it? It's painful enough as it is. Do I really want to relive all that? Having the money isn't going to make it any better. Would it do some good so this guy's ego doesn't cause someone else to die? Would it make him see the light and change his attitude?

I don't know what to do. All I know is this - I want my mommy.

This was brought to you by the letter D and the number 2.