"Son, I'm afraid we've got some bad news. Your mother has a nine-inch tumor in her stomach. Tests show that she has cancer in her bones and her lymph nodes, as well. Both breasts are so full of cancer that a mastectomy is pretty much pointless." My dad relayed this message over the phone in his usual this-is-important voice.
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I stood in my tiny kitchen in our condo. Tears streamed down my face, and all I could say was, "Oh, Mommm. Oh, Momm."
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"But we're going to get her into chemotherapy and we're very confident that the Lord will bless us and your mother will be cured. It's crucial to have a positive attitude in cases like these. We're not going to give up." His words didn't comfort me. I believed in the importance of having a positive attitude, but really? Both breasts, lymph nodes, bones, AND a nine inch tumor?!? It seemed to me that this was way beyond a positive attitude.
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Mom's chemotherapy bought her two more years. I suppose it was a miracle in a way, because the abdominal tumor vanished, and tests revealed that she was, apparently, cancer free. But then, three months later, after coming home from the grocery store, my mother inexplicably got out of the car and crawled all the way up the driveway and into the house. This was followed by four and five hour visits to the bathroom, and gibberish. She spoke gibberish and she wrote gibberish. Before she even saw the doctor, we knew: The cancer was back, and it was in her brain.
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This was August 1996. She didn't live to see 1997.
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As soon as I heard of her turn for the worse, I returned to Utah, knowing that this would be the last time I saw her in a somewhat lucid state. During this trip I took on the responsibility of trying to talk her into getting up off the toilet, after hours and hours of sitting there. It seemed that it just hurt her legs too much to stand herself back up, but her life-long intense modesty dictated that we not enter the bathroom to help her. Once she finally came out of the bathroom, we sat together for hours, me talking and her listening, then trying to respond to me in a coherent fashion, all to no avail. It was gibberish, and she knew it. Finally, she just gave up and bawled and held out her arms for me to come and hug her. We cried together that day, knowing that was it. The last thing I told her was, "I'm the luckiest of all of your children; I got to spend more time with you than any of the others."
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It was a snowy night in December when I returned again. Everyone was saying that it was the end. She had stopped eating and drinking. The pain was so great that she often cried out, even with the assistance of morphine. That night all six of us kids, aged 11 to 28, my dad, my aunt, and little Amelia, gathered into her bedroom to say goodbye. We knew she was holding on until we could all be there, one last time. "Mom," I choked, "We're all here now, and we want you to know that we love you so much for the life and love that you have given us. But we know that it is time for you to go, so let go, Mom. You don't have to hold on any more, you don't need to endure this pain any longer. Let go." The little master bedroom was filled with sobbing and tears as each one of us kissed her lightly on the cheek; hugs would hurt her riddled bones too much.
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I sat up with her late that night, dropping morphine drops into her mouth every fifteen minutes. She writhed in agony. She kept holding her hand out and staring up into the corner of the room. Finally the fatigue of the day's drive and that evening's events began to overwhelm me and I went to my bed and drifted off. My biggest regret is that I didn't pour the entire bottle of morphine into her mouth before I went to sleep.
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I awoke with a start at 5:45 a.m. I hurried in to my mother's room. She was gone, but the pain was frozen on her face. My sobs woke the rest of the family. She was only 51.
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The most surreal part of that morning was that, even though our mother was lying still in the bedroom down the hall, we opened our Christmas presents. But she would have wanted it that way.
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One of my dearest friends, Sue Dormans, is training for the San Diego Breast Cancer 3-day, and she has committed to raising the $2300.00 towards breast cancer research and treatment. Even if you can donate $5.00, or $10.00, every little bit will help in that seemingly endless battle against this horrible, horrible disease that took my mother and countless others. Certainly you have been affected by breast cancer in some way. Leave a comment, if you'd like, to share how your life has been affected by breast cancer, and then click here to make even just a small donation--no amount is too small.
Please.
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