i am home again and i am thankful.
mummy was in great spirits when i arrived and her appetite was strong. i had braced myself for severe weight loss, but it was less than i had expected...so all was good.
i have come to learn that there is always a new "normal."
first it was mind-numbing fear, then fear was normal. then it was the shock of her abbreviated life expectancy, then that became normal. we adjust.
i did talk to a man who told me that radiation and chemo bought his friend's wife five more years, and i started to go there. i was in the shower, a week ago tuesday, thinking about my mom who, at that exact time, was starting chemo. and i let myself think, "five more years would be awesome."
not a minute after i got out of the shower, i heard the phone ring. it was maura calling to tell me that mom was now ineligible for the double blind study for a 3rd chemo drug because the MRI from the previous week had shown a suspicious spot on her brain. it's a roller coaster. one minute, so high, the next minute, unspeakably low. the new normal is shattered and the bar is lowered once again. your knees buckle. you sob for a while. and then you adjust.
i can't wrap my head around losing her brain. i just can't. she taught me how to think.
but, as if telepathic, lisa called me within an hour of my call from maura. she lost taylor to brain cancer. she already understood so much of this that i couldn't begin to understand until i was in the thick of it. we talked about my upcoming trip and mom's brain and thanksgiving and sisters and i calmed down.
i met lisa's first husband (taylor) after he was diagnosed with brain cancer. he had at least eleven years after that. enough time to bring molly into the world and let her know that she was truly loved by her father. but i digress.
the point is, that when taylor finally lost his battle against brain cancer, he was still taylor. he had a really great (and sick) sense of humor. and when he died, he still had that. and he still was taylor. and he was most certainly still the man who loved molly baldwin more than life itself.
so i was panicking...but i realized that i was getting way ahead of myself.
molly is 14 now and i see so much of taylor in her. and i know that his love for her has transcended his death. that brings me a great deal of comfort.
so did an e-mail from carisa that described her marathon run. it described signs from her mother, including a woman who ended up running in front of her for a leg of the race with the word "marion" in large caps on the back of her shirt. carisa's mom, MARION, ran with her that day.
so i remind myself, again, to live in the moment. and i remind myself that death is not the end.
not long after i arrived, mom's chemo kicked her ass. she was incapacitated by intestinal unrest.
i still sleep downstairs with the nursery monitor, but she doesn't have the energy to grab her walker and sneak to the bathroom. she finally gave up and asked for the chamber pot.
who knew i would miss the sound of her walker trying to sneak across the flagstone floors in the middle of the night?
i empty the chamber pot.
there is an old saying that goes "there are no athiests in foxholes."
basically, it means that when men find themselves at war, they usually also find god.
fighting cancer with someone who you love so much must be like being in a foxhole. your perspective about everything changes. and i remember things that the nuns told me that must have been buried pretty deeply in my subconscious. i'll spare you the details, but it was a story about jesus washing the feet of his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. and it was a lesson about love and humility. (those of you who know me well know that i have a thing about nasty feet. so this one hit home.) and the lesson was that when you love someone, really love someone, to be able to do something like wash their feet (or empty their chamber pot) is more of a gift for you than it is for them.
she was too sick to have the second and third parts of her first round of chemo as originally scheduled. we did take her in to the treatment center so she could get IV fluids to combat the dehydration caused by the long bout of intestinal unrest.
we also had an x-ray to make sure that her bowel wasn't obstructed.
that was tuesday. today is friday and she is finally eating again. she is back on the pain meds and is suffering less.
we tried to watch "i heart huckabees" this afternoon, but i kept falling asleep. i was curled up behind her in her twin hospital bed, and she was holding onto my leg and we both kept falling asleep.
she is asleep again now.
fang is here with me. i am on a pull-out twin sleeper in the family room and fang is curled up, under the cover, leaning on my leg.
he and beastley have gotten better with each other, but they are not buddies.
this afternoon, when i was playing catch with fang in the back yard i realized that he is practically blind. he fakes me out when we are at home because he knows exactly where everything is. here, everything is unknown and he can't hide it nearly as well. it explains why he gets so defensive when the beast comes to talk to him. he hasn't drawn blood since last saturday...so that is progress.
aunt jane and uncle john fed us on thanksgiving. aunt jane came by this morning and they will both be back tomorrow evening. we left a love letter on their pillow before we left on thursday evening.
elly came by and gave mom communion again today. one of elly's kids will be passing through rockville tomorrow with his family. i will go up the street and take pictures of her grandchildren when they stop by. i just want to do something meaningful to thank her for everything she is doing for mom.
uncle jude called today. he said that he's got a pot of water on the stove and he is ready to deliver maura's baby as soon as she is.
we are so loved. and we have mummy in flannel p.j.s, tucked into a cozy bed. and we are so thankful.
