Hazardous Parenting with Cancer

So, my youngest 3 seem to have established some new rules. I don't believe they've been sitting around having a group discussion, but they are each responding the same way for the moment. The rules currently imposed by 3 of my teens are 1) be drunk or stoned part of every day 2) Mom can never, ever show any signs of having cancer 3) Mom can never, ever, be sad about having cancer 4) one has decided that being even ruder and angrier at me is the way to get through this 5) stick together and don't let anyone new or healthy into the group. (For those of you who don't know - my 5 youngest are full sibs, so they have the same tempers and the same attitudes and the same genetic vulnerability to addiction, and they were all exposed to drugs and alcohol on a daily basis while in utero and the youngest 3 girls hang out in the same social network). These are hard rules because I'm a therapist so of course I want to discuss this with everyone; and, I find myself crying at t...

People have said to me that now that I am ill, they are sure that my acting out teens are rallying around me. I know that you Hazardous Parents are laughing just as hard as I am at this. Of course they aren't. In fact, it's escalated the behaviours of two of them and caused one whom I had hoped was successfully launched to return home (nothing short of armed guards at the door was going to stop that one) and re-create her norm for havoc. I've finally got some support for one of them starting next week and this is a learning point. I've been amazed at how slow the professionals are to get working with our family. This outreach worker has had our file for weeks but first she had to have vacation (ok, I get that) and then she somehow managed to take two weeks to set an appointment with my teen so that won't even start till next week. You'd think with something like this they could be moving more quickly. Also, we've had Child Services involved for a while now...

Have you ever noticed how positive change tends to happen after hard work and good planning; yet, bad changes happen out of the blue and in an instant. That's what happened for me when my doctor said "Brenda, you have cancer". Suddenly I found myself living on a new planet with new rules and new worries and no energy to deal with any of it. I've read how people go into shock or denial and have to take time to process this kind of information - but as any Hazardous Parent knows, there isn't time for that kind of thing in our kind of family - the first thing comes to mind in any situation is "How will this impact my family?"And as I walked out of the dr.'s office I was hit with the harsh realization that this was going to trigger major abandonment issues in my three youngest who are currently teens in the peak of their acting out years. We were already dealing with their drug use, their refusal to attend school, rages, regular visits from poli...