Fifteen Years Ago...

I was working as a delivery driver for a welding supply company. One morning while already on my route, my boss -the owner of the company- comes pulling up at about my 3rd stop of the fully scheduled eight hour day.

I knew something was wrong.

You see my mom had already been battling with ovarian cancer for a little over two years, and though having many small victories throughout that time frame, she was five weeks into a hospital stay during which she could not eat food by mouth.

Her colon had become blocked and she was basically being kept alive by an IV pumping glucose into her bloodstream. She'd not been fully functional as far her digestive system was concerned for over a year at point that anyway, having had a colostomy surgery done during her last major round of chemotherapy after they'd diagnosed the first blockage of the colon.

No, ovarian cancer doesn't just stick to the ovaries. It is perhaps the most nasty form of cancer a woman can get. Ovarian cancer is usually not found until it is in it's late stages, and it's very aggressive. Two short years before, Mom had not been diagnosed with cancer of the ovaries just six weeks prior after having a partial hysterectomy. The pathologies were all clean... benign.

Around 5 1/2 weeks after Mom's hysterectomy in 1992 we were at a Carman concert at the old Astroworld theme park in Houston when Mom started to realize she was beginning to retain fluid in her abdomen. To make a long story short, only a few days after that Saturday trip she looked like she was 5 months pregnant from the swelling. She knew that was not right. We all did.

I'm not exactly sure what it must have been like. For one, I am not a female. I do know that when a women hits the menopausal age range, a hysterectomy is often a way of relieving some of the stress and strain of the whole process. The doctor had suggested a partial, which meant she'd get to keep her ovaries. At the time, that was a good idea since it would mean that Mom wouldn't need extra hormone therapy. Her ovaries still in place, they would continue to function and infuse the body with the proper hormones to complete the journey through menopause.

For about 2 weeks mom recovered.

For about 2 weeks mom was beginning to finally enjoy life as a fully grown women without the need of what every women needs in her purse monthly. If it sounds frank and personal, just know that I was mom's best friend... she was up front with me, by this time I was 19, and I knew that this was a blessing for all women to have "finally" passed that point of life.

For the week before the Carman concert, my mom's favorite Christian artist by far, she was excited and looking forward also to going with me on rides and roller coasters.

Cut short.

The fun would not last. Life is short for that matter, but we never really got to have all the fun she'd planned with me for the weeks leading up to, or shortly after, her "female surgery." Mom had a way of being very private, while still not hiding the facts of life from her only child, her only son... We had talked about maybe getting to go back to Disneyland or even Walt Disney World, or just anywhere we'd gone before and just getting to be buddies while Dad was out fishing or pawn shopping. Mom was my best friend like that. I was... I am... a mama's boy.

Flashback to ten years before all these events... mom had undergone surgery to remove a malignant tumor from her breast. I was scared then. Dad was scared then. Mom seemed resilient... but then, she always did. But looking back at that first bout with cancer, which was followed up with another surgery around six months later that was much more extensive and revealed more malignancies... we took a long family vacation. It was 1984. It was fun. I'll never forget it. We drove all over the state of my mother's birth... of my own birth. Florida never had looked more cool to me. We'd passed far, far deeper than the usual stop among relatives in Pensacola and Panama City. We drove down and saw Wakulla Springs, to Tampa/St. Petersburg where the home of Thomas Edison still stands... saw all the sites from Walt Disney World to Miami, the Everglades to Key West, Daytona to St. Augustine... we did it right. We made memories.

Ten years.

There is a bench mark of sorts that the medical profession will hesitantly say that a cancer patient is in remission. They hesitate even more to use the term "cured." It had been ten years in 1994. Mom had not had one single recurrence of breast cancer. She would be described by today's standards as a survivor of that disease. And rightfully so. Her faith in Jesus as her Healer, combined with her brave choice to under go dual sub-cutaneous radical mastectomy had eradicated any signs of alien cells for a decade.

Just as her doctors were telling her to be thankful, and that it looked as though she would be free from cancer she decided to take care of her long bout with endometryosis. She asked the doctor, Dr. Ron Paul of Lake Jackson, TX (yes the recent, and past, presidential candidate) what he would suggest she do as menopause was approaching as it was making this condition (which caused severe uterine pain for days on end) worse. He recommended a relatively "new" approach of those days. To only remove the uterus and tie-off the tubes, but leave her ovaries in place. That would be the route of least need for estrogen hormone therapy. This was best in Mom's case because some studies had shown that estrogen therapy had a risk of resurrecting cancerous activity in the breast tissue in some patients. So given her history, she and Dad... and I even was filled in on the situation... we all agreed it would be best to go with the "partial." It was 1992 and a strange five and a half weeks.

Five and a half weeks was all there was. All the time Mom had the "privilege" of living with the expectation of actually living free of abdominal pain... free of very severe monthly pain... freedom from what she'd known since grade school on a monthly basis... she got five and a half weeks of liberty. Two weeks were spent doing very limited activity as she recovered from the hysterectomy. I spent a lot of time with Mom around the house helping her with chores. She'd taught me how to do the laundry and the dishes when I was nine... she knew that cancer was no joke, having lost her own father, two aunts, and other relatives to it... so she'd made sure in 1984 that I could fend for myself on the basics at a very young age. She was great at preparing me for life. So as I helped her in this time of recovery from a "minor" procedure, we would talk.

We always talked. We would laugh and cut up. We would hang out and dream up what we would be doing that summer in Florida... where all we'd see if we could talk Dad into taking us (I get my desire to show my kids the world from my Dad... but Mom, I'm certain, taught him the importance of being that kind of father). And the concert, outdoors at the big stage at Astroworld's Starplex-type amphitheater, the one with Carman, our mutually favorite singer, was coming up in days... in mere hours.

Hours... which seemed like days.

On a morning about a week after the concert, I knew Mom was going to have an exploratory surgery by suggestion of Dr. Paul. I went on to work, as mom had told me to "go on... I'll be fine." I went on in to work for about a four hour shift. I hadn't heard from dad, and I'd been at work for a while when my boss, the store supervisor at the Albertson's came to my register and said, "Hey, bud.. let me take over for you for a minute. Your dad needs to talk to you."

"Pale as a ghost" is how I would describe Dad's countenance. I knew that look. I'd seen it a decade before. As we stood there next to the shopping carts, people coming in and out, going about their lives, Dad began to tell me that the doctor "thinks they found cancer." He said that when Dr. Paul came out of the operating room he was "visibly shaken" and had "tears in his eyes." As Dad's voice broke I told him, "Mom beat it before. We'll get through this." Maybe not in those exact words, but I tried to keep it positive. Ironically, I remember Mom and Dad being relieved and thanking God a week later when they found out the cancer was not a recurrence of breast cancer. They were celebrating that God had truly healed Mom a decade before. And He had. No doubt about it. But the medical staff informed them that it was ovarian cancer... and that it was the nastiest strain known. The news was not good, and getting worse. I tried to maintain a brave face forward for both Mom and Dad.

I would keep that facade for the next two years.

For the next two years Mom had many treatments. Some treatments were experimental, some tried and tested... but none were easy. Some of the tests she underwent were literal first-of-a-kind breakthrough studies in oncology. M.D. Anderson is a place of world wide convergence both of patients and doctors seeking and practicing the most up-to-date and state of the art treatments and science concerning cancer. With all of this clouded "hope," the hospital quickly becomes merely another spoke in the wheel of a system that you soon realize is only "practicing" medicine and is still trying to figure out what it is doing. While many advances in medicine have been achieved over the decades in Houston's top cancer hospital, the reality of limited hope and the certainty of delayed death is abundantly evident. No amount of courage an individual can muster before entering the halls of such an institution can prepare you, patient or family member, for the sickness and disease you witness within one hundred feet of crossing the door's threshold. Cancer knows no gender, color, race, creed, or age. Cancer has no mercy.

There is no mercy in a two year fight with a strain of cancer described as "usually caught in the final stages." On a scale of one to four, Mom's case had been "caught" very late, in the early fourth stage. The news was quickly broken to us as a family that she'd have three to six months "if we're fortunate" considering the type and stage of cancer raging in her abdomen. Sparing the gruesome details, over the course of two years, which at minimum was eighteen months past the initial "forecast" of Mom's life, she lost several organs beside her ovaries, which were taken almost immediately, and had lost all of her naturally brunette, trademark frosted blonde hair, and had gone through rapid weight gain and loss from the surgeries and chemotherapy and radiation treatments. For eighteen months of that two years Mom was a prayer warrior. Mom literally amazed the hospital staff with her upbeat demeanor. She would come in for overnight chemotherapy treatments, administered through a "port-o-cath" inserted into her upper rib cage near her breastbone, and leave having encouraged the nurses and other patients. Mom was a real trooper.

Mom was a soldier.

She was soldier who had grown tired. There is only so much that this corruptible shell of human existence can handle. The load of multiple surgeries and treatment chemicals had worn her down. Dad was driving back and forth sixty-five miles one way to church and back to Mom's side in the hospital. He slept in the room on the fold out chair. Dad would make sure I knew the latest so I could be sure and pray. I would make trips up to see her there about every other day as much as I could . Of course, Mom had a way of turning the visit into checking on me. She would say, "Baby, don't worry about me up here. I'll be fine... you go ahead and go to work." "My working man," she'd call me. She had a way of rallying her energies together to talk with me on the phone. Dad would later tell me how he'd witnessed her going in and out of consciousness and unresponsiveness the last week or so. I knew it was close to the end when Mom missed church on Easter Sunday. Mom never missed church, or anything I did for that matter.

Having missed church on Easter in recent days, I knew Mom was extremely ill. Dad had told me I'd probably want to come up and visit again on the weekend for sure. We'd just had a visit from Mom's older brother and his wife from Jacksonville, FL the weekend before. Mom had even ventured down out of the room to the hospital's front entry way area to sit outside with them and enjoy the afternoon breeze, as much as anyone could in a metropolitan medical center complete with fumes of city buses and taxi cabs. I had missed that trip outside. Mom had told me the last visit to enjoy my new past time... I had joined a church softball team. Our first games were coming up the following Tuesday and Thursday. I missed the Tuesday game to drive up and see Mom. She was upset with me, sort of, and told me not to miss my next game. Dad didn't make it back into town that Wednesday night as I recall. He'd stayed with Mom at the hospital. He'd told me that Mom was getting very sick with a persistent fever, a new development. Thursday night I played that church softball game, Mom lying in a hospital bed some sixty miles away, Dad at her side... But I played like Mom had said to. I enjoyed it, and did my best. I had reached base twice, and scored... even threw someone out at second. I called the hospital when I got home to report my successful outing to my parents, and Dad warned me that Mom was beginning to slur her words and that she may sound different on the phone. When she got the phone I heard my Mom loud and clear. She sounded so tired. She sounded so worn out, but we had a good clear three or four minute conversation. She told me the usual things. "I love you son." "I'm proud of you." "I'm glad you had fun." "Be careful tomorrow at work, my working man." I told Dad I loved him and we hung up the phone. I set my alarm and went to sleep. I got up and went to work as usual at the job I'd only had about six months delivering welding supplies. I was on my route already when I got an unexpected visitor.

That morning my boss pulled up around nine or ten o'clock at about my third stop of the fully scheduled eight hour day. He told me he had just received a call from my Dad and that he was going to personally drive me to the hospital. Half in shock, I left the delivery truck as it sat, awaiting the freshly recharged CO2 cylinders for the restaurant run I was making. We just left it all sitting there. No responsible cylinder truck driver leaves cylinders unstrapped and loose. My boss said,"leave it... we'll send someone else over here to get it." Time was of the essence, but it would seem like all day before we finally got to the hospital. A few stops later, and at around one in the afternoon, we'd made the seventy mile journey and there I was, my mother's only child, witnessing what I thought impossible.

Impossible.

That was the word in my mind. My Mom had just talked with me on the phone, clearly and cohesively, not fourteen hours earlier. We had just talked about my game. She had just told me she loved me. Now, lying with all manner of tubes and monitors surrounding and attached to her, she was unresponsive... she was in the full throes of adult respiratory distress syndrome. Her brain had taken such a long hit from the fever that it had fooled itself into thinking her airways were obstructed. There was no obstruction, but still her lungs were struggling. This was not the cancer. This was the result of an infection in her bloodstream. The infection was a result of a rare form of diabetes she'd acquired from the steady glucose infusions she was receiving to keep her alive. The blood infection was a yeast strain contracted from the diabetic condition. The yeast infection had brought on the fever. The fever had literally burned up neurons in the hypothalamus of her brain that controlled her breathing. A chain of events had now unfolded because she was tired. She was worn out physically.

Seeing that moment she was helpless, and that Dad was speechless, I asked if I could read from Mom's Bible. Of course I could. My Mom would have it no other way than for me to read to her from the Sacred Text she'd read to me from all my life. I knew the verses that had sustained her for the two year fight... But I also knew the verses that would be more of a comfort and soothe. As I read to her from Psalm 91 and Psalm 23 and other Scripture she'd highlighted like Philippians 4:13 , I would interject things she'd taught me. I told her that she had raised me to serve God, and I would. I told her that she still needed to see me graduate college, and that we had a lot of places to go visit, and that I wasn't ready for her to go. She wasn't responsive verbally, or by any other physical sign. I had been holding her hand for about an hour when Dad began to sing a worship medley that she loved so much. I was squeezing her hand, though she had not moved her fingers. I was praying as Dad was singing... Praying that God would let Mom breath easier... Praying that she could rest... that if this was the end, I didn't want to see her struggling any more. As Dad was nearing the end of his singing, I went to move my hand away from Mom's and switch hands, because my arm had fallen asleep. As I was doing this, Mom squeezed my hand firmly! No other physical signs... no verbal acknowledgment, but she was holding my hand and not letting go. Then I noticed her breathing eased. She began to breathe normally. Her breath became shallow and peaceful. I drew Dad's attention to her breathing pattern and told him to alert the nurse, as I saw it as a turn for the better. The nurse informed us that Mom was nearing the end. I told Dad what I'd prayed, and believed (as I still do) that God had answered prayer, and was allowing her to not struggle as she'd been doing for the past nine hours. In the hour and a half I had been there, this was the only "normal" sleep I had seen.

Peace came over the room.

Peacefully she went. Her heart rate slowed. These experiences over the last two years with Mom, I suppose, were when I first learned to read hospital monitors. I knew what was happening and again alerted Dad. He got the nurse, and she said she'd call the doctor. Being the believers that we are, Dad responded, "Well, you get him, and we'll call on our Doctor, the Great Physician one last time." We spoke life. We agreed for God to perform the miraculous... We waited for seconds that seemed like hours. Long time family friends had just shown up at the door to visit Mom... seeing what was happening, Mom's friend fell back against the door jamb. She began to pray, as did he, along with Dad and I that God would raise her up. Peace again entered the room. As Mom lay there lifeless, Dad looked at me and I knew. It was time. We had to let her go. I agreed as Dad prayed even as Jesus had done on the Cross. We committed Mom's spirit into the Hands of God. Peace stayed in the room. My Dad's mother was also there sitting behind me, and she began to just speak the name, "Jesus." I remember through the peace feeling pain begin to radiate throughout my whole body as the doctor's pronounced the time of death. I remember the look on my face as I looked to the mirror, hoping to wake up from a dream. I remember the sobbing, from my Dad and myself.

One by one they began to come.

For one solid hour after Mom passed away, one by one, the nurses, doctors and orderlies that had met Mom, cared for her... and even some other patients came by to pay their respects to her. They all were devastated and encouraged at the same time. They encouraged us with words of how she'd inspired them to always fight for life. They spoke of how she'd lifted their spirits while they were trying to lift hers. They said, almost to a person, how they were aware that God was on her side, and that she was truly an angel from God. We knew what they were saying. I looked across to Dad and knew I'd have to strengthen up a bit more for a while. The days ahead would be rough. I had no idea that some of those days would seem to take longer than others. I had no clue that losing your mother, or losing a wife could hurt for so long. I don't remember as much vivid detail about anything else that week. Just that day. That day in April.

Fifteen years ago.

 

Thanks everyone.


Just got off the phone with dad... they (he and my step-mom) read this on my facebook.

He had a little cry... but we're both better now.



I guess some of you nailed it on the head... Do not take your families for granted, however your family is set up. Always seize the opportunities to express love to those you care about.

And be extra sure you see a doctor on a regular basis. It may stink if you find something negative, but early detections and treatments are keys to survival and long life.

Take care of yourselves and those you love.