Even the devil gets cancer

I'm 34 years old and the youngest of 7 kids.   My oldest sister (2nd oldest sibling) is 46 and just got diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer.    Her life personally and professionally is a total mess.   She's got a JD (from the only law school that accepted her) and an MBA (from one of those online universities) and only works temp jobs occasionally.   She met and married her now ex-husband within a month...met and married within a month.   He currently lives on a Navy base in Japan with their 2 high school aged sons.   The boys asked to go live with him upon starting high school because they needed a break from my sister (and really missed their dad who they rarely saw).     She rents mainly because she could never get approved for a mortgage, nor would ever have any percent of a down payment saved up.   She has no savings, and is very good at bullying people into buying her things when she needs them.   She also is good at talking herself into buying alot of things she doesn't need but wants.   Why buy a plane ticket to visit her sons over the holidays when a 32" TV is less expensive?    She hasn't held down a steady job in probably 3 years or so, and is often barely scraping by.

She is loud and bossy and argumentative.    She always uses a very loud voice, there's no such thing as an indoor voice for her.   We can't decide if its because she has a hearing loss that causes her to have such a loud voice, or if she really just thinks EVERYONE in the room cares what she has to say.   I don't like to shop with her because she'll tell me what I HAVE to buy "Oh Jean, you absolutely HAVE to buy this, its so you, you must, I insist" even though 99% of what she thinks I should buy is not worth my time or money.   Any time my fiance sees her she thinks of something she needs him to move, or to reach and get, and proceeds to tell him what job she has in store for him.   Even if its at our house, even if the person she's bossing around is someone she hasn't even been introduced to yet!     And she loves to argue.    She loves to poke at people until she's provoked them to fight.   The kicker though is that the minute someone decides to stand up to her and argue back she usually resorts to name-calling, and then refuses to continue fighting.  

But don't get me wrong, she has a big heart too.   She occasionally takes on pro-bono work for battered women, or will donate old clothes to a womens shelter, or will donate her time at a soup kitchen.   She's often buying me nick-nacks (junk) that I don't want, but she thinks its going to light up my day.   But considering her general obnoxious demeanor, I try to avoid her as much as possible.   She'll use her birthday as an excuse to bully me into buying us tickets to some expensive show I don't even want to see, but she does and it gives us a chance to hang out...which in public almost gives me anxiety because I don't know who she's going to tick off or offend around us.   Bottom line, I think she's crazy.   I often refer to her as Crazy Aunt ___ to my neices and nephews and it gives them a good chuckle as they nod in agreement.   My siblings often yell at me for calling her that, but I suggest that I'll quit calling her that when she stops acting like it.   I still call her that today.    I've often joked out of guilt that I have so many siblings that I get to pick which ones I like!

A few weeks ago I started hearing rumblings about this sister going in for a follow up mammogram and the news was being rumbled amongst the family as really bad.   She sent a text out about how cancer cells sink and her cells all sank.   I then got an angry email about how my mother said something about "being resigned to having to take care of my sister since she was going to be a burden on the family and no one would want her".    My sister physically takes after my mom, to a tee.   My mother has always defended my sister behind her back, she's always been her biggest fan and rationalizing that my sister sees the world different from everyone else, like looking at the world from the bottom of coke bottles, and was totally sympathic to all my sisters antics.    So seeing this email made me investigate things further.   Long story short (save the long version for the book maybe?) mom was hurt about Thanksgiving plans, and got more upset when my sister had her hand out looking for donations so she started pointing out that my sister has no savings, no financial control of her life, and probably did make the comment about being resolved to having to care for my sister if it came to that.   Honestly, my mom was pretty much right.   But I couldn't alienate my sister at this point, so I merely suggested she go easy on mom since she really was one of her biggest fans and my sister really was going to need her down the road (so like maybe don't bite the hand that feeds you??).   So because of this whole fiasco my sister decided to go to her biopsy alone, she didn't want to be a big burden to the family, in classic drama queen style.   I did however, manage to get in on her plans to go for the biopsy results.    It was me, my other sister, and crazy Aunt ___ going for her biopsy results on Saturday, and I figured chances were good something would upset her before then and we'd get uninvited, which almost happened, but I was able to bribe us back in with Starbucks.   By this time my sister had started a blog since she was feeling annoyed with all the concerned phone calls, texts, and email messages (although at one point she blocked everyone from her email).   So she started a blog and I can't even begin to make up some of that content!!!   In a nutshell, the blog gives her free reign to rip on the family and vent, and going into the biopsy result meeting she sounded like she'd be dead and buried by the end of the year!      

Results indicated she has stage 1 breast cancer, and a lumpectomy could remove the lump and help determine if the cancer spread to the lymph nodes.      I honestly think she was disappointed that to realize she's going to have to continue scraping by in life much longer than she had recently resolved.   She was ready to give up and die, and now that's not going to happen.  

Before going any further, my book idea would be exploring the reality of dealing with a loved one who you don't really like getting cancer.

Overall themes would be about dealing with things, making choices, learning from mistakes, putting things that should be behind you behind you, and having it told through funny or crazy antecdotes.