IMO Raleigh documented his abuse of Carli in his anti-chemotherapy essay
I didn’t know who Carli was until a couple weeks ago. A friend sent me her profile because I write about care work + Mormon culture + I am being treated for breast cancer. I think she’s incredibly problematic as an ivermectin influencer. I also think she’s a victim of abuse. Victims are often problematic because people are often problematic. I’ll write about ivermectin and influence once I’m through my treatments. (Not writing about Carli specifically.)
But for now, I’ve got to post a couple thoughts about the misinformation Raleigh has been spreading about chemotherapy and how he used that misinformation to justify his actions towards Carli, according to his own words. I just hope someone who needs to hear that chemotherapy is necessary and the way they feel on it is OKAY finds this through a google search or something.
Raleigh wrote an essay about how chemotherapy changed Carli’s personality. He cites a chemo drug nicknamed “the red devil” specifically. The official name for this drug is Adriamycin (doxorubicin). It’s called the Red Devil because it is red and it is a pretty brutal treatment. I’d heard about this story from others on this sub. I hadn’t read any of the essay until Carli posted it yesterday. Often this chemo is given as part of a protocol called, AC-T. It’s really aggressive treatment that lasts a pretty long time.
In the essay, Raleigh writes that Carli said the “f-word” to her oncologist. He is horrified by her swearing. And he’s horrified that she’s expressing anger in her oncology appointments.
If your oncologist can’t handle your anger, find a new oncologist. Same with your husband.
He also says he broke down her bedroom door in the middle of the night. She’d locked it and expected him to care for their children at night. This was unacceptable to him. So when their 4 yo started crying and she wouldn’t unlock the door, he broke through it to get in. He included photos of his cut up arm and the broken door in his essay. This must have been terrifying for the woman on the other side of the door. I consider this an act of abuse.
I don’t have time or space to unpack all of this. Here is all I’ll say:
I went through the red devil portion of my chemotherapy between Dec 25 and Feb 26.
It was the most destabilizing and debilitating experience of my life. Worse than PPD, worse than severe endometriosis, worse than shingles, worse than the bilateral mastectomy I had last October. During the first four days after each infusion I was unable to form memories. When I tried to think or talk, I often lost my words - could not dig up even simple ones like “milk” and “help.” My bones ached from the inside out. My mouth tasted like rotting meat smells and everything I tried to eat tasted like my mouth. There was nothing I could do to fix this because the problem wasn’t in my mouth, it was my sense of taste. My skin hurt, even when it was just touched by the fabric I was wearing. The follicles on my head felt like open wounds, every single one of them, until every last bit of hair fell out. I went into chemo induced menopause and my anxiety surged. I started having to rock myself back and forth FOR HOURS at night - and sometimes during the day too - to keep from screaming out of fear, anger, confusion. I was incredibly vulnerable physically and mentally.
I felt like I lost myself at first, but I realized early on that wasn’t true! I was just being myself while myself was surviving one of the most aggressive chemotherapy treatments available. And that was a part of me I hadn’t had to access before.
Being myself while surviving cancer treatment meant: turning all care work but love over to my husband. It meant letting big feelings out even if they didn’t always make sense to me or the people around me. It meant locking the door sometimes and needing the hall light left on others. It meant I had to stop telling everyone everything was going to be okay because I needed to hear it instead. It meant putting myself first EVERY SINGLE DAY because the only care work I could perform was for myself. The physical demands of my cancer treated body are exhausting.
For our three kids: My husband made every school lunch, did every bedtime, went to every recital, made every dinner, did all the laundry, dishes, housekeeping of any kind.
For me: he organized my medication, he held me when I could handle being touched and stayed on the other side of the bed when I couldn’t, he went to every doctors appt - with prepared questions while also transcribing the entire thing. If he couldn’t go because of work, he made sure one of my friends or siblings could take me. He worked 60 - 80 hour weeks because he was afraid of losing our health insurance.
The grief of my diagnosis and what it could mean was (and is) overwhelming. The stress of keeping our lives together while we try to keep me here went beyond overwhelm. It had physical impacts. The most obvious in his day to day? He developed a tic in one eye that has still not gone away.
I’ve felt great sorrow over what this has done to him and me and our kids and all of us together. But I’ve not once felt guilty over any of it. This care is what we owe one another.
And if/when the cancer comes back I will take on treatments as bad and worse than AC-T, without hesitation. My life is worth it. My husband says the same. He understands my life is worth it.
But what if he hadn’t? What if I’d been in the thick of AC-T and he’d told me this was all wrong. I was being changed. What if he told me I was destroying him as well as myself? My not on chemotherapy self would have asked him to move out that day. But the part of myself I could access on chemotherapy? The one who couldn’t even form memories? She was so vulnerable. I don’t know. She might have stopped standard care. She might have followed him to something wild like horse dewormers. She might have not realized how wrong it all was until her brain healed - 12 to 18 months after the last chemo treatment. Well, after recurrence was well underway.
A man who could watch his wife, and the mother of his children, go through AC-T and complain it made her less of a cheerleader is a patriarchy-pilled ninny. A man who could watch his wife go through that treatment and then BREAK DOWN HER BEDROOM DOOR TO FORCE HER TO TAKE CARE OF A CHILD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND THEN WRITE AN ESSAY ABOUT IT AS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW DAMAGING CHEMO IS TO CANCER PATIENTS AND THEIR LOVED ONES?? That man is a danger to people who do care work and to people who require care work.