In late 2002, my mother was helping some friends move into their new home when she pulled a muscle in her back.
What started as your average ER visit ended as life altering news...
My mother had a CT-Scan and X-ray to see if she had pulled a muscle or something relative to the move. Within several minutes of the scans, a nurse came to my mother's bedside and told her, "You have cancer. You need to get your affairs in order. You have 6 months to live." At that point, my father had just stepped out of the tiny room and my mother was all alone to field the immediate thoughts, fears, and tears. She asked why she had no symptoms and how they knew that she only had 6 months to life but no one could answer her questions. She was told to go home and make an appointment with an oncologist as soon as possible.
No one in our family ever had cancer. No one in our family knew an oncologist or how to go about calling one.
My mother and father wanted to keep my mother's diagnoses private and did not want to share the information with my sister and I until they had more information. At the time, I was a freshman in high school and my sister had just started fifth grade.
As many children do, when they enter high school, I had made up my mind and told everyone that I was going to be a doctor. Oddly enough, I told everyone that I wanted to be a cancer doctor. I was that kid that wanted to find the cure for cancer. All of this was prior to my knowledge of my mother's diagnoses.
As time went on and my mother started having weekly doctor's appointments and phone calls constantly from the local hospital, my curiosity grew into a private investigation. I had to know what was going on. Was Mom pregnant? Was Mom having surgery for her back? What the heck was going on?
I came home from school one afternoon and the phone was ringing. I looked at the caller ID and it was the local hospital. I answered the phone and it was someone calling from the oncology office. I knew immediately what was going on. I recorded the message for my Mother, as she was at work at the time, and then googled everything and anything relative to cancer. I grabbed the only book I had that contained information about medicine and the human body. Using post-it's, I marked the pages that contained the word cancer. I printed 10's of pages of information from online. I had to know what was going on.
When my Mother came home from work that evening, I was anxious to ask but didn't want to seem like I was getting into her business. Instead, I picked up the phone, went through the caller ID and asked why the local hospital had been calling so much. My Mother's eyes immediately welled up and she said, "Let's talk". At that point, I started to feel my stomach tighten, my heart started pounding, and the thoughts in my head began circulating like I was on something. My Mother, without hesitation, said, "I have cancer. It's not good but we are going to fight".
I could write for days about what we've been through; the surgeries, the treatments, and the hospital stays and late night ER visits, but I'm not able to write a book today. Today, my Mother is still alive and still fighting the disease. We have been through hell and back.
Most recently, my Mother had her 10th surgery to remove some hardware that was supporting her spine. The cancer had spread to vertebrae in her lumber region and required numerous surgeries to remove. We were given the option of removing the hardware or letting my Mother live in excoriating pain. The doctor informed us that although she would be out of pain, by removing the hardware, her spine would more than likely collapse and she would lose the function of her legs. We are approximately 1.5 months from the surgery date and she is gradually losing function of her legs. It is the most horrible experience to watch your Mother, who was once a premier athlete and gardener, slowly lose the ability to stand, walk, or move her legs.
She has started physical therapy to build up strength in her arms and work with her legs to continue the function as long as she can. We are not sure if the spine is collapsing or if the swelling from the surgery has created the numbing. The one thing that we know for sure is that she is not giving up. She has not come this far to give up now.
We can only continue to take it a day at a time and keep fighting.
