Julia Grace

3 years ago my mother-in-law was diagnosed w/ pancreatic cancer. The first couple yrs of radiation, rounds of chemo seemed to be working. We assumed/hoped she would be okay. There was a turning point this summer when her health rapidly deteriorated. The chemo stopped working.

This brought a lot of latent emotion to the surface for me. From the ages of 7-10 years old I watched my mother slowly die of colon cancer. I wanted to draw parallels here, but watching someone slowly be eaten by cancer as a child is very different than as an adult.

As a child I didn’t have the ability to understand and process what was going on. Only in my mid-20s did I end up finally grieving, coming to terms her death. Went to therapy. “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion became my favorite book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OI0FS0/ 

As an aside, my mother’s death is correlated with my “unapologetic ambition” and direct, assertive nature. I became generally impatient due to the deep visceral feeling that life can be very short.

Out of options, my mother-in-law traveled around the state of Texas in search of doctors who could save her life. She was _very_ fortunate to have insurance and the ability to do this.

We’d talk to her every day, but being several states away it was extraordinarily hard to keep up with treatments, drugs, what the doctors were advising in her frequent appointments. My heart goes out to those w/ aging family in different countries who have it much harder.

In September we shifted from hoping she would make it Christmas, to hoping for Thanksgiving. She was losing a lot of weight. She could barely eat and couldn’t leave the house.

This experience has taught me many things: 1/ Your most valuable resource is time. Cliché but true. It was the only thing my mother-in-law wanted more of at the end. Spend it wisely!

2/ Time I spent mid-20s reading, thinking about death was in retrospect time well spent. This gave me a metaphorical “tool belt” of knowledge, approaches - but only when faced with death of a loved one did I learn how to really put these tools to use. I was glad I had them.

3/ There is *huge* opportunity for better software in this area, especially around the coordination of elder care with family members, as well as software/hardware to assist with quality of life for elderly and those home bound. More on this later.

4/ Think about the legacy you want to leave behind, before you go. This could be holistically in life or job-to-job. It helps you focus on the stuff that matters, less on the mundane BS.