***I mentioned several months ago that I was preparing a "cancerversary" story about my mother's ovarian carcinosarcoma cancer battle. I never posted it, but most of it was written. I have realized that the story is very long and it's not even complete yet. I am going to post what I have written so far in stages. Maybe one day I will finish the story, but in the meantime I am hoping that someone searching for comfort will come upon it and find it helpful.
The Beginning...Aug 2, 2007
One year was on Aug 2, 2008
It has been one year today.
It has been one year since I walked next to the gurney that carried my mother down to pre-op for her pending hysterectomy.
It had all started a few days before. My mother was in the process of redecorating her bedroom when she started having severe pain in her abdomen and running a low grade fever. She called her doctor who immediately had her come in for some testing. Several doctor visits later, the consensus was that she needed to have a full hysterectomy.
When she called to tell me about the surgery I couldn’t decide whether to take the time off to go be with her in the hospital or wait until she got home to help her around the house. After all, the nurses and doctors would care for her in the hospital. In the end, something told me to go.
The surgery was scheduled for Wednesday in the early afternoon. Adam, Olivia and I rushed to Dallas on Wednesday morning trying to make it to the hospital before she went into surgery. When we got to the hospital, I had Adam drop me off at the front door and I ran as quickly as I could up to her room. The hospital was full and so they had assigned her to the geriatric ward. The halls smelled of urine and hospital food and there was a constant low howling sound coming from one of the patients rooms.
I found her in her room, surrounded by friends. She didn’t look like a lady about to go into surgery. I soon discovered the surgery had been postponed. The doctors wanted her to visit one other specialist before they operated. The surgery would take place on Thursday morning.
When the commotion died down and the friends had all gone home, my mother explained that the surgery had been postponed because they wanted her to see an oncologist before the surgery. I wasn’t surprised, but didn’t think that she had cancer. The doctors were most certainly crossing all their T’s and dotting all of their I’s. What I really thought was that she had been working too hard pulling wall paper down in her bedroom, painting walls and moving furniture. I was sure this was all related to the pulling, stretching and lifting that her petite body was just not used too. Around 3 p.m. a transport tech arrived in my mom’s hospital room with a wheel chair to take her to the oncologist’s office across the sky bridge from where we were. I walked behind the wheel chair and sat with her as with shaky hands, she completed the paperwork required of her at the oncology center. She asked me several times, hoping for a thread of reassurance, if I thought she had cancer. I confidently told her that she did not have cancer. I believed with all my heart that I was telling the truth.
To be continued....
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