"C" Sucks

 

 (Originally started sometime in February 2015)

I know I want to write about this, I know I ought to write about this. If not for my personal catharsis, then for posterity. Ha!
 Dealing with a little something for over two years now. My beloved mother has Stage IV Adenocarcinoma, metastatic to her lungs. A couple on her lymph glands. She isn't hurting, thank God. And as soon as she was diagnosed, they put her on Tarceva, oral Chemo. Usually it only is effective for about 4 months, but she got two years out of it. Pretty high quality years, too.
  Then it stopped working for her, so they put her on this other crap. Too strong a dose at first, really did a number on her.

  Update 21 August 2023

 It's been quite some time since I penned this! Honestly, I didn't realize I had published it with such an abrupt ending. My mind must've not been processing clearly. So  many years, so many memories.

 My dear mother is now receiving hospice care at home. The cancer finally spread from her lungs to her brain. There are two quite large tumors, one in her frontal the other in the temporal lobe. There are also two rather small ones located in different areas of her brain. All bases are covered! 

 She had spent almost a full year with her cancer "quiet." At the time of her regular body MRI, they discovered the tumor in her lung was showing activity. It didn't appear to be anything she hadn't faced before. She went back to chemo, infusion. Unfortunately, she only went about three times then was simply too exhausted to go again. 

 We began to observe a personality shift, oh probably late 2022. Just so much more argumentative and combatant. She never was an easy person, you could set her off simply with a single word in the wrong tone. But now, she was constantly enraged, and stayed angry. She lost any filter whatsoever! She told her beloved niece horrible things, making her cry. 

 She couldn't understand who wrote what part of a text exchange. If she had ever texted someone about her cancer, she now read that text as one recently received! Finally, she fantasized that my cousin's (on my father's side) mother had phoned her and left a voice mail. His parents had been divorced for over 40 years! No one other than my cousin himself had had any contact with her for that entire time. I hadn't even spoken to my cousin the entire time. 

 "Give me a sign, Lord!" That big fat clue finally woke me up and I suggested we have her brain scanned for once. It took several emails to her doctors but finally they agreed. 

 So here we are, waiting for her to die. Miraculously she has not had any pain throughout this entire ordeal. I don't expect that blessing to continue as she will most likely have pain when her kidneys fail. That, hopefully, will be long before the cancer completely destroys her. Today, she knows who we are, and she knows she loves us. I am praying that's how it remains, and she can just peacefully drift away.