Aug
13
My mom has cancer. Not just cancer, but non-operable, small cell lung cancer. The kind that rapidly goes anywhere it pleases, like your brain, liver, bones. It’s not good.
She was diagnosed in Sept of 2007. She and I had sorta been on the outs because she never would come visit me here in Colorado. She went to Tennessee, Florida, Philidelphia, Maine and Arizona but always had some excuse for not coming here. Looking back I guess she was afraid she couldn’t breathe up here but at the time it really made me hurt and angry and I quit talking to her for about two months.
Then one day I got a phone call from her. She had been planning on having her bunions fixed and they did a routine chest x-ray. She said “They’ve found something”
And so it began.
My sister wanted her to come to Tennessee but she declined. She said Aunt Karen would take her to treatments. My sister went up for the first laser surgery and was there when she was diagnosed. She immediately looked it up online and knew right away the prognosis was grim.
I had a trip planned in Oct to the Chicago area to see my friend Sue and my kids, so I stayed one night with mom after Sue’s. At this point I didn’t feel the need to hang around…I mean…hadn’t I begged her to come see me and she never would? I got some harsh feedback from a few people about it but I look at it this way…we begged her to quit smoking for years and years, we offered her a plane ticket out to Colorado, we this and we that…I gave her a Bible and a What Does the Bible Really Teach book and I arranged for some sisters from the local Kingdom Hall to call on her and I left with a clean conscience.
My sister and brother, Shane, went up at Thanksgiving. I called every few days or so…Mom went through chemo and radiation and as far as I knew everything was rolling along as planned. Then in March she had an “episode” Seems she wasn’t eating right, drinking enough fluids, absolutely no exercise so she got dehydrated and developed blood clots in her legs. She was talking out of her head and couldn’t stand up so Aunt Karen took her to the ER.
My sister again went to Chicago, this time with her husband and my brother Woody. Two of my kids and their spouses went too. They got mom into a rehab place but with little hope of a recovery.
I couldn’t make it when mom was in the hospital but I took the train out again April 16 to help pack up her stuff and for moral support. (Side note: I refused to drive, relying instead on public transportation and taxis…it drove everyone mad but how was it any of their business anyways?) I stayed 9 days and proclaimed mom well enough to go to Judy’s in Tennessee.
At this point I should mention that Judy was not thrilled that mom wanted to now come to her house. Hadn’t she asked her to come before, you might wonder? Well, yes, but this was different. This was thrust upon her in the most unbelievable way…my aunt gave up the apt and my mom was basically homeless. My sister gave up a big to-do at her husband’s place of employment to go pick my mom up and then the fun really began.
The Drs in Chicago kept declaring my mom “cancer free” yet she rapidly went downhill. She rallied for a bit then BOOM! she started falling and finally hurt herself bad enough to land in the ER which resulted in a MRI revealing that the cancer was in her brain, liver, spleen, ribs and who know where else.
I had made plans to visit in early August and my sister begged me to bring mom back with me…Jack agreed and to make a long story short, here we are in Colorado…my mom can barely walk but she’s still able to think. I have had a steady stream of family in and out. My brother Shane is here now and we hope to get her in Hospice after her Drs appt next week. In the mean time I am wiping her butt, putting her bib on at meals and answering her 1000s of questions as gently as I can…it’s like having a 100 lb baby…I have thus become “My Mother’s Mommy”
