The last days: Mom's cancer journey comes to an end..

Mom is almost to the finish line.

She is in hospice as I write this and the end isn't far away.  At least that's what the medical staff are telling me.  I was summoned to her hospice center three days ago after the nurse told me her blood pressure had dropped significantly and respiration was going shallow.  The "terminal secretions" had also started so all of that, taken together, means time is getting very short.

On the negative side, both of my parents will be gone and I will be on my own, an eventuality we all face at one time in our lives.  On the positive side, I was lucky enough to have had one of my parents around for nearly a half century, which makes me a fortunate man indeed.

Since New Year's Day, when I took mom to the hospital for what will be the final time in her life, I have been wracked with guilt.  Not so much for doing it...after all, this was just a swollen leg and not cancer to begin with...but for not having done it sooner.  It likely wouldn't have mattered, but the "What If" doesn't allow for that.

As I stated previously,  my mother isn't one to get medical attention without having a reason to.  Preventative care like regular doctor visits never happened.  This was true of both of my parents and they blamed it on the generation they were born in. 

It's all speculation but I have a theory that mother was afraid of getting an early diagnosis.  Mainly because of the treatment that cancer prescribes which can be more traumatic than suffering from it.  Either that or her generation knew cancer as a death sentence,  which it essentially is now and she wanted to take it as it went.

As i sit next to her bed writing this, respiration is labored and very slow.  My sister and I are fairly certain that at least part of her is already gone.  She is a shell of herself in terms of the mom I knew just a month ago.  I'm transfixed watching her draw her final breaths hoping she isn't in pain.  It's not easy to watch even still.

I hope I've been a good son to her, because she's been an awesome mom for me.  She earned her place in Heaven alongside my dad and her family departed long ago.  I'll see her soon enough.

Thanks mom, for everything.  I love you.

The ton of bricks: Mom's cancer journey.

As I indicated in my last blog, I had to hospitalize my mother on new year's day.

To recap,  on new year's morning, it became necessary for me to put my mom in the hospital for an alarmingly swollen right leg, which was diagnosed as a deep vein thrombosis blood clot and she was admitted for treatment.

In my nearly half century of life I can't remember my mom going to see a doctor on a regular basis.  Once or twice when I was a teenager, but not very often.   In fact,  neither my mother or my father were regular doctor visit types.  My mom said her generation only went to the doctor if they were seriously ill, and never as a preventative thing.

Anyway,  after being admitted to the hospital, they started running tests on mom...CT scans, ultrasound, CAT scans and such.  Standard tests for a doctor building a patient's chart for treatment and in the process of that her doctor noticed something on her liver. 

After another CT, two MRI procedures and a biopsy, my sister and I got the news we didn't want to hear: cancer.  Confirmation testing determined that it was ovarian cancer that was aggressively spreading to her kidneys, liver, pancreas and finally the brain.  The cancer is so widespread that surgery to remove it would more than likely kill mom and chemothreapy would have no curative effect whatsoever.

As it turns out the widespread nature of her cancer doesn't allow for an accurate estimate of how much time she has left.

One estimate say six months, and a more recent one gives her four to six weeks.

Either way, mom doesn't have much time.

Mom turns 75 in two weeks.   That's a long life by any standard.  Mom was an active person until about a year ago but she's never been athletic, at least as far as I can remember.  She smoked until 1995 after my dad had his first heart attack.  None of this matters now, and it gives no indication of why this is happening to her.

Thing is, cancer doesn't need a reason really, it just happens.  The focus now is to make my mother comfortable as she heads toward the light,  so to speak,  and set her final affairs and wishes in motion and that's left to my sister and I, and unfortunately, there's no instructions as to how to do that.

It's agonizing seeing her deteriorate slowly as the cancer consumes her.  Her next move will be from respite care at a nursing center into a hospice home, which will be the last place she will visit before she departs life for good.  The finality of that is staggering when you consider what was commonplace for her a month ago now can be spoken of in "lasts".

She's never again going to return home to the house she picked out 45 years ago when my dad was transferred to Tulsa from Pittsburgh.  Not because she sold the house and moved away, but because she lived out her years here

She's never going to cook in her kitchen or wash more clothes in her washer.  It's tough watching TV and not seeing her in her chair has me wrecked every time I look. 

Hang ín there, it's going to get a lot worse