Thank you all. I now know my sleepless nights looking for support sights has been well worth it. I feel like I'm home here, somehow. The estrangement was not necessessarily with this sister, and yes I am the youngest of three, but with my entire family. Just needed a timeout. However, this particular sister and I are very able to forgive and forget and realize that now is not the time for trivial dysfunction. We have greeted each other long distance now, through this very bad diagnosis, with many "I love you's." Her and I have moved on, and I am grateful that although this is an awful situation, we are together as a family again for the most part. Unfortunately for my sister who is ill, her only biological family, lives away from Vermont. Myself in Wisconsin, my parents and other sister in Tennessee. She has her husband's family in Vermont, but it is not the same. She need's HER family. She has had help so far from her long time friends in the area, and at her request did not want any of us to fly out for her initial surgery and tongue reconstruction and first round of radiation. I think she was under the false impression that things would improve once that was done. No matter how well her doctors informed us, none of us expected the depth of this illness. I am not a wealthy person, but had vacation time saved up and will leave my own family for the first visit to Vermont for two weeks. I will take personal leave if I must and endure the financial burden, in the future if she needs more care, as I suspect she will. My parents and other sister are taking turns for the time being as she has now agreed for all of us to come. We will each start with two week intervals, and see where we are after the chemo and radiation rounds around mid-August. She talks on the phone to me. She sounds like she has cotton in her mouth. She can barely swirl a teaspoon of water in her mouth and is getting all her nourishment through the feeding tube. She seems better since they put her on the Ativan, and hasn't mentioned suicidal thoughts for a few days now. I want to thank all of you. This site is phenomonal. I can see I will be on here quite a bit, and am getting my laptop all ready to take to the woods of Vermont so that I can use the support group when I have moments to myself while I am caring for her after July 6th. Thank you so much .... - Betty

Caregiver to Sister, Woodstock, VT - 3/4 tongue removed & reconstructed w/forearm 5/21/04, some in the lymph nodes, neck dissection, brachy radiation in the hospital and now going through 2nd round radiation and to add cysplatin chemo. Stage II-III.