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Cancer is something that has affected many people in my family. My father survived kidney cancer but my mother lost her, short, battle with Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma (CTCL) in 2017. Little did we know that she was battling this for two years prior to being diagnosed because it was such a rare and difficult lymphoma to diagnose.

CTCL is a blood cancer but it is not hidden as it affects and attacks the skin. My mom would have blisters, open wounds, and inflamed skin all over her body. It started off as a blister on her nose and within a year it spread to her neck and chest. Six months after that it was on her torso and arms.

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Numerous doctor visits, specialists visits, and hospital visits and no one could figure out what it was. Before any of this we were looking forward to the first wedding in our family since my Parents, as my wedding was scheduled for May 2016. A few weeks before my wedding after yet another hospital stay for testing and treatment, unbeknownst to me, my mom begged the doctors to give her something so she could be cleared up for the wedding as she was worried about her appearance and how it would embarrass me.

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Doctors agreed and gave her some cocktail that suppressed it for about 2-3 weeks and allowed her to feel good physically, emotionally, and feel like she looked good. Not going to lie it was a great 2-3 weeks and great to see her happy. However, after it wore off this nasty disease did not just creep back up it came in full force. Within days she was covered head to toe with blisters, skin was completely red, she said it would feel like someone was peeling her skin off of her when she would put her clothes on or even pull back a sheet.

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Back to another hospital stay and more uncertainty from one of the best health systems in the country. One of the doctors recommended transferring her to the burn unit to see if they can mitigate some of the pain and inflammation. Problem is their burn unit was full but we were able to get them to transfer her to another hospital an hour away, the best hospital in the state and one of the best in the world with the best burn unit too.

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The doctors at this burn unit put her in a full body suit, as they would to someone who was burned, and it not only gave her some relief from the pain and discomfort but it helped with the open wounds, scabs, and skin to become smooth again, which was shocking because no other treatment was working. It was then when one of the Burn Unit doctors had did some research and found other cases similar to hers that we were finally able to get an idea of what it was.

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While in the burn unit the head of the oncology department consulted the burn doctor and ordered some tests and requested all of her medical records from the other health system. That was when she was finally diagnosed, in September 2016, with CTCL stage 4.

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She started chemo in pill form and it was not working, and not stopping it from progressing. In December 2016, she started chemo transfusions. Between Jan 2017 and April 2017 she was hospitalized 6 times, with the last time being 6 weeks before she went home with hospice and died on April 9th, which was four days before her 52nd birthday.

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I shared all this because April is an obvious hard month for me and while I have accepted it and continue to grieve for my Mom, I have never been able to shake this feeling of guilt that because she felt like she needed to do that cocktail to be cleared up for my wedding and how that likely made this progress so quickly. Sometimes I can't help but feel like I am the cause of her not being able to beat it because of that.

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I have done therapy and acknowledge the trauma I have experienced and it is not as painful
as it once was. However, how does one ever overcome, cope or accept that it is not their fault
for how f***ed up cancer is?

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How does trauma factor into secret keeping?

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Additionally, how does trauma make one keep secrets from one's self? For example, My mother was raped at 12 and she kept that secret buried and when she was 45 she suffered some emotional trauma during a mental health event and during therapy she unlocked that memory and went through that trauma all over again and felt tremendous guilt for holding the secret that she intentionally buried from my father.

Hi Alex, Resolve was working on negotiating a debt with me, after successfully helping me with two other debts. During the process the debt collector was not really negotiating with Resolve so I reached out to them myself to negotiate and was told they can't negotiate with me because I retained Resolve's law firm to negotiate on my behalf. A few weeks later I was sued by the debt collector. I reached out to Resolve and advised them that I was sued and never got a response. What's up with that?

Thank you