From the URevolution archive: Sullín José on her mother’s metastatic breast cancer, treatment decisions and the uneasy line between hope and guilt.
My mother was the type of person who would look you in the eye and explain how vegetarians were missing out on critical nutrients (which could only be found in steak and pork products, naturally) that prevent one from being fundamentally unhealthy and crazy. Having spent most of her adult life without suffering from so much as a head cold, she was convinced that the secret to health and longevity came down to adequate iron intake and avoiding doctors like the plague.
Not precisely prone to quackery but not exactly immune to it either, the woman would send me Flintstones chewable vitamins and try to trick me into eating liver ("No, really, it's normal steak, don't you see I fried it up with green peppers and onions?") well into my college years. When she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer at age 57, her first thought was to wonder if it wouldn't be easier to get struck down by lightning and have her ashes tossed into the Hudson River in a Hefty bag just to get it over with.
How to Navigate a Stage Four Cancer Diagnosis Like a Morbid Bitch
For the record, there's never a good time to get a call informing you that the hairline fracture in your mother's hip was actually metastatic cancer, not osteoporosis. The woman drank beer and Pepsi like ordinary people drink milk and water. But when you've just closed up shop on your life in NYC to realize your lifelong dream of moving to California, the timing tends to feel like a massive pile of horse manure shoveled onto your life by the hands of fate.
Given about twelve seconds to live, she entered a nursing home, and I decided to keep my new job and apartment (and now dead dreams) in L.A., and go back and forth as much as possible. But she had more time than the doctors had led us to expect.
Admonished not to waste her time (or expensive medical resources, presumably) on treatment, she decided to sign up for all the chemo, if for no other reason than to spite the doctors and gathering buzzards (as she saw them) that had begun to circle around her not quite dead yet corpse. As it turns out, she had a bit more than twelve seconds left to live.
Telling Benevolent Lies and Selfish Truths
My first trip back after her diagnosis involved packing up the apartment she had left in a rush for the emergency room (not realizing that it was the last time she'd ever be there again), and visiting a woman who had never even had the flu in my lifetime in a nursing home. But after a lot of deep paper bag breathing and bingeing on the video for Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work" for hours on end through a haze of Malbec, I soldiered on and went to see her with a duffel bag full of her favorite yoga pants and makeup.
When to Tell the Truth
Without sugarcoating it or pretending that her situation was something it wasn't, I let her know that she looked amazing and much like herself (because she did). The hip surgery had gone well, and her therapists were excited about the progress she was making in physical therapy. The cancer situation (it was a situation) was still a big question mark. She was still relatively young and otherwise healthy, and came from a long line of ox-like people who lived to the age of 97 on a steady diet of little more than lard and cheap grain alcohol. Hope was not exactly an irrational thing, even if it was just the last frayed edge of an already disintegrated thread.
She asked my opinion on her treatment options, and I (perhaps selfishly) told her that she should take every option that was available and attack cancer like she did the perverts that used to catcall us on the street. She decided to take my advice and continued to wear her trademark red lipstick every day and dye her hair red until it fell out.
When she told me about getting into verbal altercations with friends and relatives over their opinions about her decision to keep seeking conventional treatment despite pressure to stop or try "special teas from healers," I told her that she was absolutely right, the "dumb bitch" in question was not a doctor, and I fully supported her decision to choose her own care either way.
When to Lie
When she unemotionally but earnestly mentioned the sadness she felt over the realization that she was probably going to die shortly after her diagnosis, it was too much for me to bear. So I told her she shouldn't lose hope because miracles happened every day and there was no reason to believe that she couldn't get better. For me, the thought of her suffering through an endless feedback loop of regrets over the life she had and hadn't lived, and all the time she had "wasted" as she put it, was a hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
She died a little over three years after her initial diagnosis, the week before Christmas of course because that's how she rolled. She cracked jokes and dropped snide one-liners until the end. Although the end was unspeakably painful, she held on and stayed strong until her body finally gave out. But I still wonder if the biggest lie I told back then was convincing myself that I had encouraged her to fight and hang on as long as she did for herself, and not for me.
Editor's note on cancer care
Palliative care can be provided alongside cancer treatment, at any stage. It supports people with symptoms and the emotional, social and practical effects of serious illness. It is not the same as stopping treatment. See the National Cancer Institute’s guide to palliative care in cancer.
There is no evidence that ginger, special teas or other herbs cure cancer. Supplements can also affect how cancer medicines work. Discuss their use with the cancer care team. The National Cancer Institute explains the evidence on diets, supplements and cancer.
Related reading
For another daughter’s perspective, read Jennifer Brown’s My mom has breast cancer: what can I do? For more on unwanted advice and support, read George Root’s How to Cope with Unsupportive Family During Cancer.
Previously published on URevolution and later archived. Republished on 11 October 2026, with light editing and updated medical context.
