Time Well Spent

The other night at about 10PM, for the first time in a while, my mom had a bout of nausea. It is small moments like these that make both of us a little uneasy and nervous-- just hoping that she will get through this. The nurse's response was adding a new medicine and a "Call us if it persists" but he also mentioned it could be a number of things. Now that she is no longer going through chemotherapy (she went through 4 different drugs for at least 3 months each), and she was ineligible for radiation because her body was too weak, things like this don't happen much anymore. The nurse said it most likely had to do with her cancer spreading and the amount of compression in her stomach when she eats. In short, today, when I came home, she was okay and back to her normal self in a much more stable condition, so who knows? Maybe these types of things are subtle reminders to make the most of the moments that she is healthy when we maybe slip into too much of a routine.

This all brought back memories of the first time that someone had asked me to "gather the family" back in September 2010. It was the worst feeling ever. She was on two breathing machines and was in recovery in the ICU after her emergency surgery. Fortunately, it was a false alarm. About a week later, we had a similar false alarm, except this is when things really started to take a turn for the worst. All of her major organs were failing her and they had tried to use various medicines (the count was about 10 IV bags at one time) to reroute her blood to these central organs. This would later cause her extremeties to become nacrotic-- a black, crumply feel to her hands and feet. As time would go on in the next weeks, they were able to bring bloodflow back to her extremeties slowly, it was then time to make decisions, as they would need to start her first round of chemotherapy sooner rather than later to attack this horrible disease. After much TLC, at the time of the decision making they had decided they would need to do a BKA. Fortunately, at the moment of truth, it was only one leg, rather than both. This was the first reality-check that my mom's independence was slowly being taken from her. It was also an instance when I realized how much I needed to pay attention to everything the nurses, doctors, etc. were doing, what they were saying and not saying. It was a moment where I found out how important it was to be an advocate for my mother. In the moment of the consultation on a rainy early morning, the podiatrist and the surgeon were thinking about a BKA for both legs and as luck would have it, my mom's body threw her a small favor and only one BKA was needed. A sense of relief flooded my body. That is not to say that a BKA in general is something that is easy for anyone to go through, but I can only imagine what two might have meant.

The most recent time that I was nervous for a difficult message was the almost 10 hour wait after my mom's most recent surgery, a colostomy, because her tumor had surrounded her colon and made things extremely difficult for daily life processes. Typically, they don't do a second debluking surgery, it's just not safe and to add to it, a colostomy was hardly a surgery her body was ready for this past November. September & October were months at home that were hard on my mom. The news after her surgery was as good as could be expected. The cancer was so fierce that unfortunately, they weren't able to get it all, it had spread to the entire lining of her abdomen, but the colostomy went well and there was still more time to spend with my mom.

In comparison to how I thought I would react to all these things, something within me has allowed me to handle this all with a sense of grace, mainly to stay strong for my mom. Growing up, even into my early twenties, I fainted or felt dizzy anytime I would have to visit someone I knew in a hospital room. My older cousin had surgery and at age 10, we found this out the hard way. It's interesting how your body adapts. Since my mom first entered the hospital, I have spent at least 365 days in the hospital, some days more than once--so much so that the parking attendants at the hospital have added my mom to their prayer list.

We've been lucky to have more time than any of the doctors would've thought. Everytime a new doctor comes into the mix to help my mom and asks to see her chart or hear a short history, they are truly floored to hear just how much my mom has been through. The greatest testament to my mom is that even though I am sure deep down this is agonizing to her, she keeps a positive outlook and worries about other people over herself. She could've been taken away from us a long time ago but she wasn't. I'm not sure I believe in miracles but I do believe that there was a reason for us to have this time together and I am sure I'll cherish it forever.

The Fight of a Lifetime Begins

Over the past 16 months, there have been certain aspects of the situation that have been almost too coincidental to be true. The night my parents called the ambulance and got my mom to the hospital, a few things happened. First, it was the first time my mom had been to a hospital for herself since she popped out little ole me--how crazy, how lucky to have a solid 25 year track record, how scary to jump right into the ICU. Of course, there is always a plan and though I'm not someone who believes in cliches, like "Everything happens for a reason", someone was watching down on us as a kind acquaintance of mine from high school happened to be the nurse that was assigned to my mom on her day entering the hospital for her lengthy visit. This actually happened three times during her stay. The girl from my high school being her 1st ICU nurse. A parent of a child at the program I ran being the doctor who convinced the medical team at large to hold off on my mom's release for one day, the day that ended up being an emergency surgery. (I had actually helped this parent a year later not knowing it was the same generic name like "John Smith" and only later made the connection.) Finally, on my mom's last entry into the hospital in the ER this past November, my mom's nurse was the daughter of my elementary school art teacher. Somehow the degrees of separation provided a small blanket of comfort for my mother, which at the time meant the world to her and subsequently, to me too. I'm getting ahead of myself in the details.


The day that the team doctors gave us the official diagnosis. They used all these terms, medical jargon and trailed off about medicine, treatment and options. They were of course too smart for their own good. We were lucky in the sense that there was a resident who took note of this and spent the time to explain to us all the complications that had occurred and the proposed options for someone with Stage IV Ovarian Cancer. I highly recommend a notebook diary for each day your loved one is in the hospital to keep it all straight. For those of you who don't know, Stage IV is the worst stage of cancer you can have. My mom is pretty stubborn and when she puts her mind to something, she can overcome it. This was a fact, it wasn't just speculation. In addition, her blood sugars were a little less than 1,000. That's truly unheard of, people always try to correct me when I retell the story and I remind them that there are few things about medicine that I know, but I surely know my mother's medical history now and her blood sugars were in the 900's. It was bad to say the least. Finally, she also had pulmonary emboli-- clots in her lungs.


My mother and I are both logical people by nature and we took all the punches of the difficult news and went on to find out what options there were. Once they had regulated her blood sugars and her breathing, they could focus on the Ovarian Cancer. It was Labor Day Weekend that the most wonderful and truly loving surgeon came in from his family's BBQ and performed an emergency hysterectomy a week earlier than scheduled as the tumor had doubled in size right before my eyes. This is where the "doctor on duty turned parent I helped" came into play and listened to his patient and her daughter and called in the people he needed to. She had moved down to a normal floor the day before and then moved back up to an Intermediate Floor. The fluctuation was unreal. My aunt and dad had just left the hospital only hours before and I stayed behind and I truly wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Her lower abdomen became extremely enlarged and she was in excruciating pain. Again, we were blessed with one of those serendipitous moments. While we were waiting for a major decision to come about, we heard a group of people singing Happy Birthday to her "roommate". When I peeked behind the curtain, there were a group of 5 nuns celebrating the life of a blind nun who just turned 87. If that wasn't a true blessing, I don't know what is. The room was just filled with this incredible positive energy and a calm peacefulness.

After about two weeks of ICU living after a relatively successful surgery, complete with a breathing machine, and on my 25th birthday, September 16, she opened her eyes and without words, told me she was ready to fight this horrible disease that had taken over her life.