Thursday was a very long day. I took a day off from work to spend it at the hospital with my mom. She had her first chemo treatment and we all agreed she should have someone to go with her. Luckily, I was able to use some of my ample sick time to spend the entire day sitting by her side, holding her hand when they couldn’t access her port and had to put the needle in the back of her hand, to pass her tissues when she cried, to fetch her a lunch better than the one provided and to generally just “be there.” I was also the family reporter, texting my sister and calling my dad to let them know how she was doing. After the morning fiasco with the port, which she had put in because she has terrible veins and gets stuck many times before they can get the IV in (which, thankfully was not the case yesterday – after the nurse abandoned the port she got it into her hand in one shot), causing my mom a lot of anxiety, she was in better spirits. She has a friend who works on the chemo unit and has been a great support for her. My aunt came to visit (she is my mom’s best friend and technically, they are step-sisters but that happened when they were in their 30s and had already been friends for many years) around lunchtime. A friend she used to work with stopped by and gave her some pretty flowers and the hair dresser from the salon for the cancer patients stopped by to see her as well. The nurses and staff in the cancer center were all so nice, but it was still a very long day. We were a few minutes early for her 9:30 appointment, but we didn’t really have to sit and wait. The issue with the port took a long time to resolve but while that was happening, we were informed of all the possible (terrible) side effects the three chemo drugs could cause. The nurse also reviewed all the possible allergic reactions that might happen as the medication was being administered. It was just after 12 when my mom started the first chemo drug – a newer drug used specifically for breast cancer because it goes right to the cancer cells in the breast and has been shown to have good results. They give the chemo drugs separately, not simultaneously as I presumed. The first drug took an hour and a half to drip into her body. The first two drugs were the least toxic, both relatively new and both intended to be used strictly for breast cancer patients. It was the last drug that was the most venomous, causing the lion’s share of the side effects such as hair loss, fatigue, nausea, and a whole host of other potential issues. To test the body’s acceptance of this drug, they run a fair amount into the patient for 20 minutes then pause to see if the person is ok to continue. My mom did fine and the only thing she complained about was her eyes bothering her, most likely due to not sleeping well the night before. She called me this morning to report she is feeling ok and that she slept better last night. Now that chemo has started her attitude and her strong will have kicked in – she envisions the drugs as Annie Oakley, the best shot in the West, lining up all the cancer cells like bottles on a fence and blowing them away one by one. I think it’s a great image to have and great to know she has her game face on and she is ready to fight. She joked about wearing war paint to her first chemo session. She jokes about other stuff too. She was sad to hear she should cut her nails off (yesterday she asked me, “What doesn’t cancer take from you?”) but this morning she said it will make it easier to type and not having hair means she won’t have to hold it back when she’s vomiting. Laughter is good medicine and I told her no one believes this is a joking matter but that we all have to laugh at what we can to keep us going. So, if joking about not having hair to hold back when the drugs makes her sick helps keep her spirits up, then we laugh about it. This morning she told me she wants to live to see her grandbaby (not that there is one on the way, but the potential one I could be getting at any moment). For once I didn’t get defensive and huff that I’ve been trying – instead I just agreed, this was a good reason to keep up the fight. While it might sound odd, there was some good news yesterday too. First, her P.E.T. scan showed the cancer is not anywhere else in her body, just a few lymph nodes around her breast which the doctor expected. Halleluiah! And she found out, via her nurse friend glancing in her chart, that she is a stage 2 not stage 3 as the surgeon told her. As she put it, “that’s one step further away from a 4, so I’ll take it.” And, oddly enough, she is triple positive and while this sounds bad and I’m not really sure what it even means, it is actually a good thing. If you have to get breast cancer, you want the kind she has because it is very treatable. Not to say the treatment doesn’t suck or feel like it might kill you, but to know the success rates for treatment are high is encouraging. Halleluiah! The only thing that made my mom cry more than the issue with the port (ugh!) was when a woman came onto the floor and rang a bell, indicating she had won, she beat cancer and was now cancer-free. My mom wiped the tears from her cheeks and said, “I want to ring the bell.” I smiled at her and said, “Not today, but soon you will.” I will be there for that day too.
After the exhausting day I went home to a sick kid. He started feeling bad at his track meet on Wednesday and I worried about his asthma. He wanted soup from the diner for dinner, so I took him there and he ate three small bowls of Italian wedding soup. Then we went to the pharmacy to get him some OTC meds for his allergies/cold – we’re not sure which it is. We just relaxed the rest of the night and while he had a nasty cough (I think it sounds nasty because he wheezes due to his asthma) this morning, he seemed a little more chipper. I promised to take him to the movies tonight after we attend a matching event at CHOR.
There is a strange duality to my life right now. On one hand, my life is going on just like always – work, foster kid, honey bees coming on Sunday, stuff to do. But, on the other hand there is the added responsibility and worry of what my mom is going through. I feel like I have to be on my guard, ready willing and able to drop anything and everything to rush in and help my mom. I know she has my dad and I know he is a great source of strength for her – a true partner in every sense of the word – but who is there for him? I’m sure he won’t burden her with his worries, so who does he have? My mom started getting herself worked up about the gardening and house work she feels she should be doing and I promised to help her as much as I could. Saturday my grandfather is coming to my house to help me re-build the outside basement door to my house and this project will most likely take us all day. Sunday my honeybees arrive, so I will need to go to the farm to get them set up in their hive and do some yard work then plus make dinner, depending on how my mom is feeling. It’s strange that I have to keep living my life as my mom fights for hers, but that’s how it has to be right now. I’m hoping we can ring that bell soon and dispel cancer from our midst.
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