Mom, Part 3

I went down to visit Mom right after her surgery.  Everything had gone really well from what the surgeon had told us.  She was supposed to have a radical mastectomy, but he found no evidence that the cancer had gone as far as the chest wall muscles, so he left that intact.  He took 23 lymph nodes and sent those off to be biopsied.

She was so upbeat.  And she refused to rest.

After only a few days of defying doctor orders and over-using her arm, Mom developed an infection.  This was bad news, because the day after I was supposed to leave, Mom was supposed to go get her chemo port put in. Since they obliterate your immune system with the chemo, it's really important to not have any known infections. So chemo got delayed and Mom spent a night or two in the hospital on antibiotic infusions.

But hey!  It looked like the cancer was isolated to the tumor!  Yay!

I have videos that I shot of my son that week.  You can hear Mom in the background discussing baseball with my Dad.  All week she was the same Mom that I always knew, albeit a little more tired than normal.  But that's to be expected after major surgery.  Right?

I'm so angry that I didn't get a chance to spend more time one on one with my Mom that week.  I had my son by myself, and at 6 months and mobile he was more than enough to exhaust me with his exploring, playing, basic needs, and all other able adults thoroughly distracted by what was going on with Mom.  I cooked a dinner or 2, we watched some movies, Mom held the boy and cooed over him.  Actually, my most vivid memory of that trip is trying to put my kid down to sleep and him having NONE of it for two hours.  By the end of the visit I was tired and frustrated, but figured that we would get more quality time together at Christmas.

Oh, I do remember one other night there.  My younger sister had put out word on Facebook a few weeks earlier that she wanted to compile letters from people who knew my Mom.  Words of encouragement, favorite memories, etc. to put together in a scrapbook for my mom to read on bad days during chemo.  On my last night there, the family gathered and we presented Mom with the book.  Everyone cried, and Mom said that she was looking forward to reading all of the letters during treatment.

The next morning it was time to go.  Mom wasn't feeling great - said she slept wrong on her neck and had a nasty crick.  We hugged, I told her that I didn't know if I would be down for Thanksgiving, but I definitely would be there for Christmas.  She wished me a safe trip and asked me to say hello and "I love you" to my husband.

And then the boy and I drove away, not knowing that it would be the last time I would ever see my mother lucid.