Lucky, Lucky, Lucky part 2

The header for this thread is the punchline/introduction for a very old, and stupid joke, but it fits.

A couple of days ago, my ex-wife got a call from her doctor's office to discuss some tests she'd had run the day before.

Not surprisingly, she has cancer.

Of course, she was shattered, and I put the best spin on it that I could, it's not liver or pancreatic cancer(usually a fast track outta here, along with lotta pain) not is it colon cancer, which could lead to a colostomy bag, or maybe repeated surgeries, and so on. I am NOT a medical professional, so lot of what I say may be couched wrong, or maybe even somewhat misinformed, but I am pretty sure I have the gist of what was said. Anyway, I was of the "It could be worse" persuasion.

She's not yet 60. My first wife died as a result of a botched colonoscopy(at 52), which led to E. coli, which led to C.diff which led to what they termed "failure to thrive" which was the term given to "just giving up after being violently ill for 9 straight months, all day every day"

So.

I thought back to the efforts I made to make my previous wife's life salvageable...even a massive weight loss, 94 pounds, to donate a kidney... and getting my whole body, along with the house sterile in order to do home dialysis 4 times a day. Of course, that wife was still my wife, and she adored me(as I did her) whereas this one tossed me on the trash heap of used husbandry after only a couple years. How deep, exactly do my obligations go here?

Other factors at work...My father died of cancer at 54...my mother died of cancer at 72, and a couple years after that, my only sibling died of cancer, also 54. I am now 71. My back, knees, and hip hurt so much it can't be described. How much CAN I do?? Her house needs cleaning, her garden needs picking, her dogs need watching. Some time next week or so, when she goes to surgery, even more stuff will need doing, and I may well have to make the trip to take her, and bring her back, the 50 miles or so to an actual town big enough for a real hospital. Don't sound like a lot, but throw in that back/knee/hip thing, and it is.

What's so lucky about all that? You may well ask. Pretty simple, really.

From Bob Dylan's Idiot Wind..."I can't help it if I'm lucky"....

I'm doing stuff for her in her time of crisis, she's not having to do stuff for me during my time of crisis.