The Battle

For some reason, when we found out the dreaded news, I thought cancer meant my mom was going to die immediately.  I'm not quite sure why I came to this conclusion but it scared the hell out of me.  It wasn't true of course, the doctors never gave her a time limit and were willing to fight for as long as she was.

The doctors decided to start their part of the battle with chemo therapy because the cancer had already spread.  They tried multiple types of chemo.  Some made her very nauseous and  her hair fell out. Another gave her an entire mouth full of canker sores.  They were given in different ways also. One was given all at once through her port-a-cath, another was administered over a longer period and needed a little pump machine thingy(technical term).  Unfortunately the chemo didn't work and they eventually did a double mastectomy  and even radiation.

My mom decided to start her part of the battle by giving up beer and cigarettes.   She read positive affirmations daily and tried to meditate as much as possible (all of the pain medications she was on  made her drowsy so meditating was a little difficult). She would meet her siblings at my grandma's house every Sunday to do a healing circle.  They would turn on quiet music and sit in a circle. Each person would close their eyes and focus on sending my mom positive, healing energy.  She even tried to eat healthy and exercise.  One summer day while she was at her sister's house, she felt like she wanted to try a new way of exercising.  She decided to try rollerblading, unfortunately it didn't turn out so well.  She fell and broke both the radius and the ulna just above her wrist. After that she decided that walking was a lot less dangerous and would do just fine.

Even with all of that going on she still made time to be a mom.  She would make my lunch and take me anywhere I needed to go.  She gave my brother money when he asked, even though she couldn't really afford to.  She told us how much she loved us at every chance.  She kept dreaming of tomorrow and what could be accomplished. I helped her strip the avocado  green paint off of her old dresser and stain it a natural wood color.   She told me each time she scraped off a strip of paint she would try to envision that it was the cancer and she was removing it from her body.   She started crocheting a table cloth.  This was  hard because you have to count each stitch and when those pain pills kicked in it was hard keeping her eyes open.  I wrote a poem about this my senior year in high school.  It was published in the literary magazine and I like to think she would have been proud.

I wish I would have been more supportive of her while she was battling this consuming monster but the truth is I was selfish.  I was so caught up in how it was going to be when she was gone that I forgot to just cherish all the time we had left.  If I could do it over I would would make sure to tell her I am proud to be her daughter and I would ask more questions. I would shave my head when the chemo took hers.  I would make her lunch instead of asking her to make mine and I would drive her wherever she needed to go.   I guess that's why they say hind sight is 20/20.