Recurrence

I spent a great day-and-a-half in Denver this weekend at Time Out for Women, a women's conference of sorts put on by Deseret Book (one of the main bookstores for my church). It was a great weekend of inspiring talks and music and a much needed getaway and "refilling of my cup." This was going to be my post about the great times with friends, hanging out with Jenni, and the uplifting events of the weekend.

In the midst of this conference, i saw a message on my silenced cellphone from my mom. i listened to what was a very cryptic message. Something was wrong. But was it wrong in the sense of, "The bathrooms that i'm having remodeled won't be finished when you get here for your April visit" or "Someone has cancer"?? I actually ended up calling Doug since she said she'd call my house when she didn't get a hold of me. Checked up on the boys and asked if my mom had called. He said she had and when i asked what was up he responded, "You should call her." I made him tell me.

My mom had her first round with a non-malignant but very aggressive brain tumor in early 1984. I was 8. She'd just given birth to my much younger brother and finally made someone take her complaints of severe headaches seriously. What they found was a grapefruit-sized tumor in her brain that they figured had been growing at least 10 years. I remember feeling scared. I remember visiting her at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver after her surgery. These were still the days of the hospital "ward." I remember the elevator ride up to her floor. I remember walking through this women's ward lined with sick and post-surgical women on both sides. There wasn't a specific "neuro" ward or "gyn" ward. Everyone was just thrown together with only curtains for privacy. Somehow my mom was lucky enough to have a semi-private room in that ward. It wasn't traumatic seeing her. Her head was bandaged like a turban. My dad made jokes. She put on a happy face.

Five years later, she had a recurrence. We were living in Virginia. She was weary of military life and wanted to have her surgery at Johns Hopkins and NOT Walter Reed, where the neurosurgeon there didn't give her great confidence. My dad sacrificed and retired from the Army life he loved and thrived in. This tumor, while smaller, had wrapped itself around her optic nerve and would be tricky to remove without causing blindness and other damage. By now, I'm 13. I remember being worried Mom would not be herself after the surgery. I remember asking her if she was going to die. She assured me she was not. The surgery was a success. I remember how meticulous the surgeons said they were. How clean her brain must be. She wasn't blind but lost 50% of her olfactory nerve. She had a "leak" post-surgery of spinal fluid. It would go down her throat and her nose and required further procedures to mend. But she made it. She was strong.

And now, here we are, exactly 20 years later. And suddenly i'm 13 again. Crying into my phone when Doug told me they found another growth on her annual MRI. Sobbing when i called my mom to talk to her myself. She knew something was up. She was unusually nervous for this routine scan this year. I didn't think much of it. It had been 20 years! They were meticulous! They left nothing behind! How could it come back after 20 years?!

So now the hard part. We wait. While i worry about the fact that my mother is 20 years older and not as healthy as she was in her mid-40's and carries hepatitis C (a gift from her first brain surgery when they gave her a "routine" blood transfusion post-procedure), we've also had 20 years of advances in neurosurgery. We wait to find out whether or not she is a candidate for the gamma knife. A non-invasive "radiosurgery"--radiation that focuses directly on the tumor. The tumor can't be too big and they have to be able to clearly see its margins to be able to do it. I worry that her very scarred brain will obscure things like margins. But I pray for this option. I don't know how a person can tolerate three open brain surgeries.

This is when i don't like living as far away as we do. In the three years that we've been in Colorado, my mother has dealt with hip replacements and now this. I was pregnant or newly-delivered with Keegen with her hips and not able to help. I have this fantasy of finishing my parents' basement and moving my family in so i can be there to help. My father bears so much of the emotional burden. He is our mother hen and worries and frets and loses sleep over minor things, let alone big ones. I want to be there to bear some of that burden. Even simply, to cook meals. To keep things clean. To care for her post-surgery. But here i am 1670 miles away with my own life and family and responsibilities and hate that i can't do more.

My mom received this news while visiting family in Salt Lake. She just got there Tuesday. The envelope from Johns Hopkins arrived Friday. My dad read her the results over the phone. She was able to cry with her twin sister. To tell her mother in person. And to receive a blessing from her sister's husband. She told me she's in shock. I think we all are to an extent. After i received the news yesterday afternoon, i walked back into my conference where so much was being said about hope. And while i really struggled to focus on the remainder of that conference, i remember thinking, Oh yeah, HOPE. And optimism. And faith. I can so easily get caught up in fear and anxiety. The memories from the past all came flooding back when the news hit my ear. But I do have faith. It may be the size of a mustard seed, but it's there. While this is still very raw and scary, this CAN be OK. We can get through this again. That is certainly what i'm hoping for as i write this.