Needless to say the entire family is behind her in moral support, but there is little else anyone can do in this type of situation. I got into the habit of calling her weekly, until our conversations began to get a little heated. I tried my best to not aggravate her, by mostly listening to her plaints, but I'm afraid I've done it; I've totally angered her to the point where it is best that we don't speak for awhile.
Please keep in mind that my sister and I have always gotten along, with only one argument in our history, and that one had to do with matters of my health. I opted to go totally against traditional medicine, with my breast cancer, and this deeply concerned her, understandably so.
This time our disagreement is about her health. It's not really a disagreement, however, because I am not trying to convince her to do anything different from what she is doing. I also am not criticizing her. I merely asked her to please be careful about her prescriptive medicine, and to watch her dependency on it.
Over the year-end holidays, we all noticed that she was looking terrific and obviously feeling in better spirits. Her energy was up, she was laughing and smiling again, and we all felt a sense of great relief. On the other hand, I can't explain the difference I noticed in her personality, which left me unsettled for several months. During our last conversation, I told her I was happy that she has found a way to relieve her heavy emotional state, but offered a word of caution over long-term use of whatever it is.
This one comment really did it! Not only did it cause her to get very defensive, but also, it turned into an attack of my so-called "ways." I said, "I'm still here, seven years later." She said, "We all know how much you dislike chemicals, but sometimes they save lives."
Really, really, honest and truly... I was not telling her not to take any medicine. I was simply asking her to monitor herself, which is very stupid on my part. Can anyone truly monitor her/himself?
