Tovor
10-20-2004, 11:41 AM
My mom died last night, after a tremendous fight to survive and win the battle, and for a long time she did appear to be winning. She endured 2 years of dealing with intense pain from the effects of the chemo and the illness, and the sickness and weakness that came every week after the chemo sessions, and still she endured and stayed strong. Far stronger than I could have been, I think. I'm making this thread as a tribute to her, because I want other people who don't know her to know about her and the things she did in her life. The following is cut and pasted from a similar thread on another board, and which I used to have in my profile. It needs to be editted a bit for obvious reasons, that most of it is now paste tense rather than ongoing, and I will do that later. But for now, this is a tribute to her, and I will add much more in the days to come.
Written previously:
I am going to tell a story, a story about the current situation in my home and my life. My mom lives with me, and I am helping her get through a crisis too many women (and men, and children too) suffer with. This story is not meant to draw any "awwww" from anybody, just to show where I am in my life and why I come to this board as an escape from life sometimes, to show why sometimes I don't respond to when people write to me or respond to my posts, because my mind is so overwhelmed. It is also to urge women (and men) to check themselves often and nip it in the bud as soon as possible, because the sooner you catch something, the better off you are in the recovery of it.
The story begins in January of 2003.
A STORY ABOUT STRENGTH & COURAGE:
My mother has breast cancer which spread to her skull and spine, and the pain in her back was astonishingly agonizing for months until the chemo shrunk the cancer and the pain went away. Then from the chemo she got massive swelling in her feet and lower legs which caused agony for the last couple of months that kept coming back after treatments. She couldn't even walk from the pain being so bad. She spent a month on nightly IV antibiotic treatments and only now has the swelling and pain been lessened after starting a stronger oral antibiotic. But through it all she has remained strong and positive and is determined to beat the cancer fully. And she is beating it, with help from the chemo and a very positive attitude, because the cancer in her breast has already shrunk from 4 centimeters to less than 1. In her life she has survived an abusive father, a lifetime of rheumetoid arthritis, the death of her husband, the near death of her son from a massive head trauma which required years of rehabilitation, and now the cancer which she is beating back. And that is why to me she is the strongest woman in the world.
At the beginning. she started taking hormone treatments for her cancer rather than chemo, but it is causing a side affect of her reumetoid arthritis to flare up in her back and arms and she is in agony. I had to help her in and out of the car and in and out of her chair at dinner every day. She's had pain from arthritis her whole life and I grew up seeing her be in pain from time to time, but now it is far worse than ever before. It sucks to see your mom in such pain when there is nothing you can do to help her. I hit a freaking bump pulling out slowly from the gas station and she cried out in pain, and cried for the next five minutes because the pain that came from the bump would not go away. Crap.
Everytime it looks like it is going to be alright with her condition over the last 3 months, a new bad turn knocks her upside the head. Now she chose to go to the chemo after all. But there are different forms of chemo, and the one her doc wants to put her on won't make her hair fall out or cause her the violent sickness chemo is known for. But still, when will the other shoe drop, the other blow come, the new crap hit the fan?
UPDATE:
On August 22, 2003, scans done on her body showed that the cancer was gone, or simply too small to be detected. She will take chemo for another 1-2 months to be safe, but it's potentially possible to say that the battle is won. *whew*
UPDATE:
On September 12, they found the tumor that they couldn't see before. It's still there. It is much smaller than it ever was before, so although it is not gone like we thought, it is going, going, going, going, not gone yet, but going, going...
Just a step back, but we're still moving forward...
UPDATE:
December 26...She's been off chemo for seemingly 2 months and on hormone treatments, and her leg and feet swelling has not dimished much since she left the hospital. She's still in agony when she walks, and gets shooting pains through her legs from time to time. And it doesn't seem to be getting better. Only worse. In the words of a kosher C-3PO, "Oy vey, will this never end?"
UPDATE:
January...After spending 4 days in the hospital with roughly 80 pounds of extra fluid in her body, and her lung partically collapsed from the fluid and her liver and heart being affected also, she was treated and lost more than 50 pounds of fluid in the 4 days there.
UPDATE:
February...She found a new lump in her breast. And so it hath returneth. She'll have to get a biopsy to determine if the cancer is back.
UPDATE 02/21/04:
After months off of chemo and on hormone treatments to ensure the cancer does not return, she gets a petscan and finds out that it's all over her body now. Her neck, her spine again, her stomach, her breast, God knows where else. She threw away the worthless hormone pills and went back on chemo yesterday. Back to the beginning, starting over again on a too familiar road. On the good side, almost all of the swelling has gone down and she doesn't have any pain in her legs and feet anymore. But she is always tired.
UPDATE: 06/04:
Her immunity level is at zero due to her chemotherapy screwing up her white blood cells and she was at great risk of serious illness from her body's innability to fight infection. So for the past week until it was in order again, she had to take daily 480mcg/0.8mL injections of Neupogen filgrastim to boost up her immunity defenses. So guess who had to drive a syringe into her leg every day while she cringed in pain? Yeah, me. And guess who had never, ever, operated a syringe before and wasn't even sure of the proper and least painful way of doing it? Yeah, me. I didn't know if I was supposed to push the needle in slow and press the plunger slow, or jab it in like they appear to do in the movies, as if quicker=less pain? The first time I told her that it was going to hurt me a lot more than it was going to hurt her, but she didn't believe me. She was right, it hurt her like hell, but God how I dreaded it every day. It wasn't the needle going into her skin that hurt her, it was the fluid and how it caused the tissue it pentrated to react, that was the source of the agony. Thank God that's over with. Her immunity is back to near normal.
UPDATE 07/13/04:
The chemo is destroying her bone marrow and caused her immunity to drop to zero again. Her cancer has grown by 20% and it is out of control without the chemo. Yet the chemo is destroying her body and has put her body in serious peril of infections. So she can die from the chemo almost as surely as she'll die without it. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Life is wonderful.
UPDATE 08/03/04:
She is weak and overly fatigued, and can barely walk and keep her eyes open. She went for chemo and they wouldn't give her her treatment because her blood level is too low. The chemo is stopping the production of blood in her body and as a result there is not enough oxygen getting to her brain and the rest of her body. She's going to need a blood transfusion to replace the missing blood.
UPDATE 08/04/04:
I took her to the hospital for an outpatient procedure, the aquisition of 2 liters of new blood, a 2 litre spike like I often do with the chemistry at work. So they plugged her in to a battery charger via jumper cables and they gave her a 4 hour recharge to her power supply. No seriously, they gave her new blood and it took 4 hours. One hour for a cross and match to ensure they had her exact blood type at that time, and then 3 hours of slow pumping. After the procedure, she had a lot more energy and was pretty much back to normal. But it's back to another few days of injections.
She has another serious problem that is making everything worse for her. She has a hiatal (sp?) hernia, which is here the inner skin of her abdomen is split open and her intestines are slightly pushing through, causing discomfort and at times extreme pain. She had it repaired a few years ago but it opened again, and out of fear of another surgery she had put off going under the knife again, thinking she could handle it, and she did for the last few years. But now the chemo is enflaming her hernia even more and causing it to cause her even more pain. Her legs do not hurt her anymore, her back does not hurt her anymore, in fact despite the cancer nothing hurts her--except for her stomach. If not for the hernia, she would have no pain at all right now. But the hiatal hernia, which can be life threatening and has caused deaths when not treated, cannot be fixed due to her chemo and the risk of infection from another surgery. Her oncologist told her the other day that at this point, they can not do another surgery and she has to live with the stomach problem. She has to live with something that gives her such agony, and which can cause her death, while she fights the cancer. It is a complication that can make her victory over the cancer an insignificant win, when it makes her life so difficult throughout the remainder of her life.
Well, here we are. I tell you, if she had caught the mass early and had it removed before it spread, she would be in great shape right now. And that is why I urge all women to check themselves often and if you feel anything suspicious, have a doctor look at it immediately. Don't put if off, don't dismiss it in denial. And men too, especially if you are over 30, you should check your gonads for lumps. I did a few months ago, about 4 or 5 months ago, and found a lump where I didn't think a lump should be, indicating that the family jewels may be corrupted. I had it checked out, had a sonogram, and it turned out to be a simple cyst. *whew*. If it had turned out to be cancer, honestly I say to you, after seeing my mother go through everything over the past year and a half, I do not believe that I could do it. Before I was told that my lump was not cancer, I was already contemplating not taking chemo if it was. I concluded that seeing what the chemo did to my mom, that I would not go through it myself, that I would accept my fate and so be it. It is a hard fight, battling cancer, for both the afflicted and the family members who go through it with them.
When I started going to chemo with my mom a year and half ago, I took note of the number of people in the room, about ten chairs on each side of the room, with the people hooked up to their chemo supply, chatting, listening to the radio, knitting sweaters, playing cards, laughing, and it shocked me to see people not suffering with cancer, not dying from cancer, but living with cancer, living despite cancer. No, I shouldn't say "shocked me". It enlightened me, that's more accurate. It opened my eyes to people living despite cancer, that life is still possible and cancer is beatable. However, this has been hard on me, in ways that I don't talk about and deny when my mother brings it up. I am battling chronic depression all through this, depression and anxiety and overwhelming stress, and I have had a hard time dealing with this as a caregiver and supporter. There are times when I can't think straight because I need a place to be alone and try to sort my thoughts but she always needs me and I can't find the peace I need so desperately. The more I feel the need to get away, the worse she gets and the more she needs me, and the more she needs me, the more I need to get away, and the more I need to get away, the more she needs me. Sometimes nothing holds me together at the seams. So many people tell me what a good son I am, how wonderful I am, but I block it out because they don't know how I'm feeling. They don't know what's going through my head. I have family members, an uncle and cousins, who call me and tell me that they want to be there for me, that anything I need, whenever I need a shoulder, that they'll be there for me. But I can't open up; I don't call them, even though they would be there for me in a heartbeat. I have friends who call me and I don't call them back; friends who write to me and I don't write back. I can't open up and I'm trying to escape but there's nowhere to go. My depression has crippled me. I can't write and my unfinished novels gather dust. I have no motivation and I can barely get myself to work most days. I am usually 10-20 minutes late for work every day, but nobody says anything because I usually get stuck staying one to two hours later every day from the amount of work that I have and lack of staffing, and because I have a highly impressive past sales record that earned me notoriety in the company that exceeded many others in my position. But that is the past, and with my depression and lack of motivation, I don't have the energy or interest in repeating the extreme level of work that made me famous. But every day I feel unfulfilled because I get nothing done for myself, for my own life and enjoyment, so I refuse to go to sleep at night till the latest possible times (Rowan knows this, she sees me posting at 4am sometimes) because I can't let the day end having achieved nothing for my own enjoyment. But even with my stories in front of me I can't focus on them properly, I can't sort my racing thoughts enough to work on them, so I turn away and come to the net to reach out somehow and try to clear my mind to motivate it to focus on my writing. Not until I overcome my own personal cancer, the depression that is eating up my willpower and clarity of mind.
But this wasn’t supposed to be about me, it was supposed to be about my mother. I didn’t intend to talk about my weakness; I meant to tell you about why my mother is the strongest woman in the world to me. And that is how I leave my message.
Here is a prequel to the above story. This is another story about strength and courage. I mentioned this vaguely in prior posts and/or threads, that in 1981 I was hit by a drunk driver and was badly injured. My head was split open and I was in a coma for over 2 weeks. I wasn't supposed to live, according to the docs, and if I did and woke from the coma I would have permanant brain damage. My parents were at the hospital every day and one day my father's father died. Then my father had a heart attack in the hospital and he was put into ICU across the hall from me. So every day my mother would visit each of us, and she didn't know if either of us was going to live.
She'd see me, and then go across the hall to my father, and she'd put on a positive face and confident mask so as to not let my dad see how worried she was and worsen his condition. She had to deal with all of that, and friends would ask her how she did it, how she overcame her fear, and she told them she had no choice. There was no alternative. I did wake up from the coma (in case you hadn't realized. LOL) but I stayed there (not in ICU, just a regular room) for two and a half months rehabilitating. I had to learn the basics all over again. Walking, talking, reading, writing, ect. I was partially paralyzed on my left side at first (the right side of my brain was what was damaged), and I went for daily physical therapy and after getting out went back for therapy 3 times a week for a year, then twice a week for a year, then once a week, ect (Ever see "Regarding Henry"? That film struck a solid chord with me.) I wore a plastic brace on my left leg for 6 years to help me walk, and even today I have a permanant limp on my left leg. I also have epilepsy and depression from the brain damage.
My mother had to take me to all of this therapy and push me and inspire me and refuse to let me give up. At the same time (in the months after my accident) she had to deal with my father, a proud man who would not accept how sick he had become from the heart attack and wouldn't accept that he couldn't walk up the stairs more than once a day and not by himself, couldn't shave more than twice a week becuse holding up the razor left him fatigued, and couldn't do things by himself that "a man" should be able to do. So she had me, a crippled boy tripping all the time and taking meds and going to doctors, and occasionally falling down the stairs(I never got hurt, I got used to it.) and having to learn how to do things that healthy people do without even thinking about; and her husband who wouldn't accept that he could never do again the things that people do without thinking. He survived the holocaust and was a Marine during the Korean war, and once beat the crap out of two men at once after they disrespected his girlfriend when they were younger (my mom, God I wish I could have witnessed that! But I was but a mere seed in a pouch at that time.), so he was not a man to admit weakness and helplessness. And that's what killed him, 4 months after my accident and his prior heart attack. And my mom had to go through all of that and stay strong and keep me strong, and figure out how she was going to keep a roof over our heads without my father.
And people asked her in wonder how she made it through all that, and she told them, what choice do I have? She survived it because she had no choice, and funny thing is, recently she admitted that even she didn't know how she made it through all that. But she did. And now the roles are reversed and I'm taking care of her.
UPDATE: September 2nd, 2004:
Recently she began having extreme pain the day before yesterday in the area of her kidney, liver, gallstone, or diaphram. I went with her to the oncologist this morning and he found that the pain is from an enlarged liver. So Monty, for the little breast cancer sufferer, what do we have behind door number 2? More cancer in the liver! That's the wonderful thing about cancer. Unlike cable television, you don't have to pay additional to have it spread to other TV rooms around the house, it works its magic from room to room for free.
On the other hand, she has a cyst in her chest which recently became infected and it appears she has an infection in her chest port. I wonder if the infection could be what spread to her liver, making it enlarged. What is hurting her is the diaphram (didn't I tell you I thought it was the diaphram? I should have been a doctor!) muscle, which the enlarged liver is pushing into. She also now has the same agonizing pain in her shoulder. And guess what connects the shoulder to the diaphram, you guessed it, the diaphram! I think that anyway, that the diaphram goes all the way to the shoulder. So today I got to see her in more pain than she's ever had before since the cancer started, and I had to stand there and watch her cringe and cry and cry out in pain, when there isn't a damn thing I can do.
You know, I stopped being a believer before she came down with the cancer. I should clarify that I didn't stop believing in God per se, but I lacked the faith and love to know whether he really was there or not, and the depression took away any interest in really knowing for sure at one point. Prior to admitting that I wasn't sure if I believed in God or not, I had had heated discussions with a hasedic Jew (I didn't try to convert him, but he argued with me and accused me of being an enemy of Jews because as a Jew I had mentioned that I believed in Jesus, who I called Yeshua and he called a curse) which led to him saying that if I wanted to know the truth about what the bible said about the messiah I should purchase the Tenach (the first 5 books of the Old Covenant) and read the original text for myself. So I bought the Hebrew with English translated book and started reading it. I came to not only doubt my believe in Yeshua as messiah but to doubt God Himself. At this point I would not call either Yeshua or God a fake, since Yeshua did say (if he's legit, that is) that anyone who denies the messiah before men, he would deny that person before the Father.
My point is, regardless of how I stopped praying and reading bible and attending worship and fellowship, I prayed at the start of this whole nightmare to not let it be cancer. I further prayed that if it were cancer, that she would get through this with as little pain and misery as possible. And you know what they say about God answering all prayers? They say that he answers all prayers, except that sometimes the answer is no. Well, that much is profoundly apparent.
UPDATE 07/10/04:
Well, those following this story, there's good news, bad news, and good news. The first good news is that as per her test results on Wednsday, the inflamation in her liver is not cancer. The bad news is that she had to have immediate surgery to have the infected cyst removed, as it was angry purple and inflamed and causing extreme pain, and the infection is probably what had gone to her liver. The second good news is that she had the outpatient surgery this afternoon and had the cyst removed and it's done with. So that's that.
UPDATE 10/01/04:
UPDATE: December 26, 2003...
She's been off chemo for seemingly 2 months and on hormone treatments, and her leg and feet swelling has not dimished much since she left the hospital. She's still in agony when she walks, and gets shooting pains through her legs from time to time. And it doesn't seem to be getting better. Only worse. In the words of a kosher C-3PO, "Oy vey, will this never end?"
All of her swelling had gone down in the next few months after that update and she was able to walk without the intense pain from the swelling. But the fates can't have that. Nature abhors a vacuume, or a respite from her pain apparently. Th swelling is back, she is in intense pain again, she can't walk, she can't move, and she is devestated again. She's going to the doc today to have tests done and I have to leave work early to take her because she won't be able to walk to the car or drive. At least now she has a doctor who is immediately trying to find out what is causing the swelling, and I tried to persuade her of that, that it won't be like it was last time. But she is emotionally destroyed and has laid in bed the last few days barely doing anything. And I'm dead myself. I can't be positive, I can't cheer her, I can't change her. I don't want to be here, I don't want to be part of this anymore. But I have no choice. It's like trying to hide from the wall in your room. No matter which way you turn, it's still there.
**More to be added later, time to make more arrangements.**
Written previously:
I am going to tell a story, a story about the current situation in my home and my life. My mom lives with me, and I am helping her get through a crisis too many women (and men, and children too) suffer with. This story is not meant to draw any "awwww" from anybody, just to show where I am in my life and why I come to this board as an escape from life sometimes, to show why sometimes I don't respond to when people write to me or respond to my posts, because my mind is so overwhelmed. It is also to urge women (and men) to check themselves often and nip it in the bud as soon as possible, because the sooner you catch something, the better off you are in the recovery of it.
The story begins in January of 2003.
A STORY ABOUT STRENGTH & COURAGE:
My mother has breast cancer which spread to her skull and spine, and the pain in her back was astonishingly agonizing for months until the chemo shrunk the cancer and the pain went away. Then from the chemo she got massive swelling in her feet and lower legs which caused agony for the last couple of months that kept coming back after treatments. She couldn't even walk from the pain being so bad. She spent a month on nightly IV antibiotic treatments and only now has the swelling and pain been lessened after starting a stronger oral antibiotic. But through it all she has remained strong and positive and is determined to beat the cancer fully. And she is beating it, with help from the chemo and a very positive attitude, because the cancer in her breast has already shrunk from 4 centimeters to less than 1. In her life she has survived an abusive father, a lifetime of rheumetoid arthritis, the death of her husband, the near death of her son from a massive head trauma which required years of rehabilitation, and now the cancer which she is beating back. And that is why to me she is the strongest woman in the world.
At the beginning. she started taking hormone treatments for her cancer rather than chemo, but it is causing a side affect of her reumetoid arthritis to flare up in her back and arms and she is in agony. I had to help her in and out of the car and in and out of her chair at dinner every day. She's had pain from arthritis her whole life and I grew up seeing her be in pain from time to time, but now it is far worse than ever before. It sucks to see your mom in such pain when there is nothing you can do to help her. I hit a freaking bump pulling out slowly from the gas station and she cried out in pain, and cried for the next five minutes because the pain that came from the bump would not go away. Crap.
Everytime it looks like it is going to be alright with her condition over the last 3 months, a new bad turn knocks her upside the head. Now she chose to go to the chemo after all. But there are different forms of chemo, and the one her doc wants to put her on won't make her hair fall out or cause her the violent sickness chemo is known for. But still, when will the other shoe drop, the other blow come, the new crap hit the fan?
UPDATE:
On August 22, 2003, scans done on her body showed that the cancer was gone, or simply too small to be detected. She will take chemo for another 1-2 months to be safe, but it's potentially possible to say that the battle is won. *whew*
UPDATE:
On September 12, they found the tumor that they couldn't see before. It's still there. It is much smaller than it ever was before, so although it is not gone like we thought, it is going, going, going, going, not gone yet, but going, going...
Just a step back, but we're still moving forward...
UPDATE:
December 26...She's been off chemo for seemingly 2 months and on hormone treatments, and her leg and feet swelling has not dimished much since she left the hospital. She's still in agony when she walks, and gets shooting pains through her legs from time to time. And it doesn't seem to be getting better. Only worse. In the words of a kosher C-3PO, "Oy vey, will this never end?"
UPDATE:
January...After spending 4 days in the hospital with roughly 80 pounds of extra fluid in her body, and her lung partically collapsed from the fluid and her liver and heart being affected also, she was treated and lost more than 50 pounds of fluid in the 4 days there.
UPDATE:
February...She found a new lump in her breast. And so it hath returneth. She'll have to get a biopsy to determine if the cancer is back.
UPDATE 02/21/04:
After months off of chemo and on hormone treatments to ensure the cancer does not return, she gets a petscan and finds out that it's all over her body now. Her neck, her spine again, her stomach, her breast, God knows where else. She threw away the worthless hormone pills and went back on chemo yesterday. Back to the beginning, starting over again on a too familiar road. On the good side, almost all of the swelling has gone down and she doesn't have any pain in her legs and feet anymore. But she is always tired.
UPDATE: 06/04:
Her immunity level is at zero due to her chemotherapy screwing up her white blood cells and she was at great risk of serious illness from her body's innability to fight infection. So for the past week until it was in order again, she had to take daily 480mcg/0.8mL injections of Neupogen filgrastim to boost up her immunity defenses. So guess who had to drive a syringe into her leg every day while she cringed in pain? Yeah, me. And guess who had never, ever, operated a syringe before and wasn't even sure of the proper and least painful way of doing it? Yeah, me. I didn't know if I was supposed to push the needle in slow and press the plunger slow, or jab it in like they appear to do in the movies, as if quicker=less pain? The first time I told her that it was going to hurt me a lot more than it was going to hurt her, but she didn't believe me. She was right, it hurt her like hell, but God how I dreaded it every day. It wasn't the needle going into her skin that hurt her, it was the fluid and how it caused the tissue it pentrated to react, that was the source of the agony. Thank God that's over with. Her immunity is back to near normal.
UPDATE 07/13/04:
The chemo is destroying her bone marrow and caused her immunity to drop to zero again. Her cancer has grown by 20% and it is out of control without the chemo. Yet the chemo is destroying her body and has put her body in serious peril of infections. So she can die from the chemo almost as surely as she'll die without it. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Life is wonderful.
UPDATE 08/03/04:
She is weak and overly fatigued, and can barely walk and keep her eyes open. She went for chemo and they wouldn't give her her treatment because her blood level is too low. The chemo is stopping the production of blood in her body and as a result there is not enough oxygen getting to her brain and the rest of her body. She's going to need a blood transfusion to replace the missing blood.
UPDATE 08/04/04:
I took her to the hospital for an outpatient procedure, the aquisition of 2 liters of new blood, a 2 litre spike like I often do with the chemistry at work. So they plugged her in to a battery charger via jumper cables and they gave her a 4 hour recharge to her power supply. No seriously, they gave her new blood and it took 4 hours. One hour for a cross and match to ensure they had her exact blood type at that time, and then 3 hours of slow pumping. After the procedure, she had a lot more energy and was pretty much back to normal. But it's back to another few days of injections.
She has another serious problem that is making everything worse for her. She has a hiatal (sp?) hernia, which is here the inner skin of her abdomen is split open and her intestines are slightly pushing through, causing discomfort and at times extreme pain. She had it repaired a few years ago but it opened again, and out of fear of another surgery she had put off going under the knife again, thinking she could handle it, and she did for the last few years. But now the chemo is enflaming her hernia even more and causing it to cause her even more pain. Her legs do not hurt her anymore, her back does not hurt her anymore, in fact despite the cancer nothing hurts her--except for her stomach. If not for the hernia, she would have no pain at all right now. But the hiatal hernia, which can be life threatening and has caused deaths when not treated, cannot be fixed due to her chemo and the risk of infection from another surgery. Her oncologist told her the other day that at this point, they can not do another surgery and she has to live with the stomach problem. She has to live with something that gives her such agony, and which can cause her death, while she fights the cancer. It is a complication that can make her victory over the cancer an insignificant win, when it makes her life so difficult throughout the remainder of her life.
Well, here we are. I tell you, if she had caught the mass early and had it removed before it spread, she would be in great shape right now. And that is why I urge all women to check themselves often and if you feel anything suspicious, have a doctor look at it immediately. Don't put if off, don't dismiss it in denial. And men too, especially if you are over 30, you should check your gonads for lumps. I did a few months ago, about 4 or 5 months ago, and found a lump where I didn't think a lump should be, indicating that the family jewels may be corrupted. I had it checked out, had a sonogram, and it turned out to be a simple cyst. *whew*. If it had turned out to be cancer, honestly I say to you, after seeing my mother go through everything over the past year and a half, I do not believe that I could do it. Before I was told that my lump was not cancer, I was already contemplating not taking chemo if it was. I concluded that seeing what the chemo did to my mom, that I would not go through it myself, that I would accept my fate and so be it. It is a hard fight, battling cancer, for both the afflicted and the family members who go through it with them.
When I started going to chemo with my mom a year and half ago, I took note of the number of people in the room, about ten chairs on each side of the room, with the people hooked up to their chemo supply, chatting, listening to the radio, knitting sweaters, playing cards, laughing, and it shocked me to see people not suffering with cancer, not dying from cancer, but living with cancer, living despite cancer. No, I shouldn't say "shocked me". It enlightened me, that's more accurate. It opened my eyes to people living despite cancer, that life is still possible and cancer is beatable. However, this has been hard on me, in ways that I don't talk about and deny when my mother brings it up. I am battling chronic depression all through this, depression and anxiety and overwhelming stress, and I have had a hard time dealing with this as a caregiver and supporter. There are times when I can't think straight because I need a place to be alone and try to sort my thoughts but she always needs me and I can't find the peace I need so desperately. The more I feel the need to get away, the worse she gets and the more she needs me, and the more she needs me, the more I need to get away, and the more I need to get away, the more she needs me. Sometimes nothing holds me together at the seams. So many people tell me what a good son I am, how wonderful I am, but I block it out because they don't know how I'm feeling. They don't know what's going through my head. I have family members, an uncle and cousins, who call me and tell me that they want to be there for me, that anything I need, whenever I need a shoulder, that they'll be there for me. But I can't open up; I don't call them, even though they would be there for me in a heartbeat. I have friends who call me and I don't call them back; friends who write to me and I don't write back. I can't open up and I'm trying to escape but there's nowhere to go. My depression has crippled me. I can't write and my unfinished novels gather dust. I have no motivation and I can barely get myself to work most days. I am usually 10-20 minutes late for work every day, but nobody says anything because I usually get stuck staying one to two hours later every day from the amount of work that I have and lack of staffing, and because I have a highly impressive past sales record that earned me notoriety in the company that exceeded many others in my position. But that is the past, and with my depression and lack of motivation, I don't have the energy or interest in repeating the extreme level of work that made me famous. But every day I feel unfulfilled because I get nothing done for myself, for my own life and enjoyment, so I refuse to go to sleep at night till the latest possible times (Rowan knows this, she sees me posting at 4am sometimes) because I can't let the day end having achieved nothing for my own enjoyment. But even with my stories in front of me I can't focus on them properly, I can't sort my racing thoughts enough to work on them, so I turn away and come to the net to reach out somehow and try to clear my mind to motivate it to focus on my writing. Not until I overcome my own personal cancer, the depression that is eating up my willpower and clarity of mind.
But this wasn’t supposed to be about me, it was supposed to be about my mother. I didn’t intend to talk about my weakness; I meant to tell you about why my mother is the strongest woman in the world to me. And that is how I leave my message.
Here is a prequel to the above story. This is another story about strength and courage. I mentioned this vaguely in prior posts and/or threads, that in 1981 I was hit by a drunk driver and was badly injured. My head was split open and I was in a coma for over 2 weeks. I wasn't supposed to live, according to the docs, and if I did and woke from the coma I would have permanant brain damage. My parents were at the hospital every day and one day my father's father died. Then my father had a heart attack in the hospital and he was put into ICU across the hall from me. So every day my mother would visit each of us, and she didn't know if either of us was going to live.
She'd see me, and then go across the hall to my father, and she'd put on a positive face and confident mask so as to not let my dad see how worried she was and worsen his condition. She had to deal with all of that, and friends would ask her how she did it, how she overcame her fear, and she told them she had no choice. There was no alternative. I did wake up from the coma (in case you hadn't realized. LOL) but I stayed there (not in ICU, just a regular room) for two and a half months rehabilitating. I had to learn the basics all over again. Walking, talking, reading, writing, ect. I was partially paralyzed on my left side at first (the right side of my brain was what was damaged), and I went for daily physical therapy and after getting out went back for therapy 3 times a week for a year, then twice a week for a year, then once a week, ect (Ever see "Regarding Henry"? That film struck a solid chord with me.) I wore a plastic brace on my left leg for 6 years to help me walk, and even today I have a permanant limp on my left leg. I also have epilepsy and depression from the brain damage.
My mother had to take me to all of this therapy and push me and inspire me and refuse to let me give up. At the same time (in the months after my accident) she had to deal with my father, a proud man who would not accept how sick he had become from the heart attack and wouldn't accept that he couldn't walk up the stairs more than once a day and not by himself, couldn't shave more than twice a week becuse holding up the razor left him fatigued, and couldn't do things by himself that "a man" should be able to do. So she had me, a crippled boy tripping all the time and taking meds and going to doctors, and occasionally falling down the stairs(I never got hurt, I got used to it.) and having to learn how to do things that healthy people do without even thinking about; and her husband who wouldn't accept that he could never do again the things that people do without thinking. He survived the holocaust and was a Marine during the Korean war, and once beat the crap out of two men at once after they disrespected his girlfriend when they were younger (my mom, God I wish I could have witnessed that! But I was but a mere seed in a pouch at that time.), so he was not a man to admit weakness and helplessness. And that's what killed him, 4 months after my accident and his prior heart attack. And my mom had to go through all of that and stay strong and keep me strong, and figure out how she was going to keep a roof over our heads without my father.
And people asked her in wonder how she made it through all that, and she told them, what choice do I have? She survived it because she had no choice, and funny thing is, recently she admitted that even she didn't know how she made it through all that. But she did. And now the roles are reversed and I'm taking care of her.
UPDATE: September 2nd, 2004:
Recently she began having extreme pain the day before yesterday in the area of her kidney, liver, gallstone, or diaphram. I went with her to the oncologist this morning and he found that the pain is from an enlarged liver. So Monty, for the little breast cancer sufferer, what do we have behind door number 2? More cancer in the liver! That's the wonderful thing about cancer. Unlike cable television, you don't have to pay additional to have it spread to other TV rooms around the house, it works its magic from room to room for free.
On the other hand, she has a cyst in her chest which recently became infected and it appears she has an infection in her chest port. I wonder if the infection could be what spread to her liver, making it enlarged. What is hurting her is the diaphram (didn't I tell you I thought it was the diaphram? I should have been a doctor!) muscle, which the enlarged liver is pushing into. She also now has the same agonizing pain in her shoulder. And guess what connects the shoulder to the diaphram, you guessed it, the diaphram! I think that anyway, that the diaphram goes all the way to the shoulder. So today I got to see her in more pain than she's ever had before since the cancer started, and I had to stand there and watch her cringe and cry and cry out in pain, when there isn't a damn thing I can do.
You know, I stopped being a believer before she came down with the cancer. I should clarify that I didn't stop believing in God per se, but I lacked the faith and love to know whether he really was there or not, and the depression took away any interest in really knowing for sure at one point. Prior to admitting that I wasn't sure if I believed in God or not, I had had heated discussions with a hasedic Jew (I didn't try to convert him, but he argued with me and accused me of being an enemy of Jews because as a Jew I had mentioned that I believed in Jesus, who I called Yeshua and he called a curse) which led to him saying that if I wanted to know the truth about what the bible said about the messiah I should purchase the Tenach (the first 5 books of the Old Covenant) and read the original text for myself. So I bought the Hebrew with English translated book and started reading it. I came to not only doubt my believe in Yeshua as messiah but to doubt God Himself. At this point I would not call either Yeshua or God a fake, since Yeshua did say (if he's legit, that is) that anyone who denies the messiah before men, he would deny that person before the Father.
My point is, regardless of how I stopped praying and reading bible and attending worship and fellowship, I prayed at the start of this whole nightmare to not let it be cancer. I further prayed that if it were cancer, that she would get through this with as little pain and misery as possible. And you know what they say about God answering all prayers? They say that he answers all prayers, except that sometimes the answer is no. Well, that much is profoundly apparent.
UPDATE 07/10/04:
Well, those following this story, there's good news, bad news, and good news. The first good news is that as per her test results on Wednsday, the inflamation in her liver is not cancer. The bad news is that she had to have immediate surgery to have the infected cyst removed, as it was angry purple and inflamed and causing extreme pain, and the infection is probably what had gone to her liver. The second good news is that she had the outpatient surgery this afternoon and had the cyst removed and it's done with. So that's that.
UPDATE 10/01/04:
UPDATE: December 26, 2003...
She's been off chemo for seemingly 2 months and on hormone treatments, and her leg and feet swelling has not dimished much since she left the hospital. She's still in agony when she walks, and gets shooting pains through her legs from time to time. And it doesn't seem to be getting better. Only worse. In the words of a kosher C-3PO, "Oy vey, will this never end?"
All of her swelling had gone down in the next few months after that update and she was able to walk without the intense pain from the swelling. But the fates can't have that. Nature abhors a vacuume, or a respite from her pain apparently. Th swelling is back, she is in intense pain again, she can't walk, she can't move, and she is devestated again. She's going to the doc today to have tests done and I have to leave work early to take her because she won't be able to walk to the car or drive. At least now she has a doctor who is immediately trying to find out what is causing the swelling, and I tried to persuade her of that, that it won't be like it was last time. But she is emotionally destroyed and has laid in bed the last few days barely doing anything. And I'm dead myself. I can't be positive, I can't cheer her, I can't change her. I don't want to be here, I don't want to be part of this anymore. But I have no choice. It's like trying to hide from the wall in your room. No matter which way you turn, it's still there.
**More to be added later, time to make more arrangements.**