Currently Chasing: My Mom

I get a lot of junk mail. Every day I go to the box, and every day it's the same shit. Bills wanting money. Stores wanting money. Charities wanting money. I always pay Bill first. He's a bitch. Then I pay Stores. She's sweet but manipulative. Every now and then there is something left for Charity, my quiet, needy neighbor. 

Sometimes it's Saint Jude's. sometimes it's wounded warriors, but most of the time it's cancer of some sort. I stick in a check for $20, mail off the envelope and I don't give it any more thought.

Until December 10, 2012 when my mom got a headache. A bad one. And after two years of dealing with these migraines, she finally saw a doctor. He did an x ray which revealed more than 7tumors in her brain. Further testing revealed cancer in her lungs. Stage 4. 

My mom did what anyone would do. She left. Hospital gown and all. She high tailed it back home. But the police followed. And they brought her and that gown right back. 

One month later my mom was released. Radiation took the tumors, along with her hair and her spirit. What was left was a woman in pain. Constant pain. In the 11 days I spent with her after her release things went from bad to worse. 

She went from getting up for meals, to barely eating. She couldn't move. Even the weight of a blanket was too much pressure on her leg, which we would find out later also had tumors. This woman, once at my bedside for the birth of my daughter begging to take my pain and endure it herself if she could (and I would have let her!) was now begging me to end hers. 

If you don't know what it's like to hear your mother beg you through tears to help her through her pain, then you are blessed. It's horrible. Especially when there is nothing you can do but offer her a pain pill (which does so little) and hold a cup while she sips water. 

Let me tell you this about my mom. She can take a lot and never complain. She can overcome in the worst of situations. Once while on our way to a luau (we are a family of dancers and weekend luaus were a way of life for us. A bunch of white girls in wigs sure, but we were as authentic as it got!) our van engine caught in fire. While my grandma yelled for us to SAVE THE COSTUMES, my mom went around to the front, opened up the hood and blew out the fire. This was my mom. My fire knife dancing, poi ball swinging mom! 

And then she got a headache. 

Part if me wonders if she would have been fine, just continuing to self medicate.  What uf she hadn't gone to the doctor that day...would she still just be a woman with a headache. And not a woman with stage 4 cancer and no hair. 

My mom. It's only really hitting me now that she is dying. My last hug to her before leaving her side had to be loose and barely connected. Too painful for her to be held tight. I can imagine the pain of not holding me close far outweighed the physical pain. And there was nothing I could do for either. 

My mom is not going to do chemo. She wants to fight. Or at least that's what she thinks I want to hear. But her pain is so severe. She is calling out every couple of hours. To weak to lift herself. Thinking about getting her up and dressed and into the car for weekly chemo treatments seems completely impossible when even pulling up her pants sends her over the edge.  Pain patches, oxi, Vicodin, Norco. It's all child's play. I may as well be giving her sweet tarts. It does nothing to quiet the storm. And I know it's gonna get worse. And I can't bare the thought. So I made the decision to begin hospice care. Do not resuscitate. No feeding tubes. No CPR. No 911.  

I still can't decide if I'm a devil or an angel. I love my mom. And she asked me through tears to stop her pain. This is the only way I can think to do it. My mom is dying. And it's killing me. 

Cancer will forever be so much more than a charity envelope. No more will I be able to mail a check and wash my hands of it. It has my mom. MY MOM. And I'll never stop wanting her back.