The C Word.
It was August 8th 2010, my dad’s 43rd birthday when our lives changed forever.it was like any other birthday. We had cake, ice cream, and even sang happy birthday to him except it was utterly quiet this year, other than the “Happy Birthday’s” and singing. Later as the day went by, my mom looked at my sister and I and said, “We need to talk.” that is when I knew something was wrong.
In the room sat my mom, dad, sister, I and our pet dog Bernie. Everyone was staring at each other blankly, not saying a word. Finally I asked “What is going on?” my mom responded, “Well, your dad and I went to the doctors today.”
“Oh I didn’t know you had an appointment today?” I said confusingly.
“Well, last week when we were on vacation your mom found a lump in her breast.” Dad said weakly.
I knew where this conservation was going and I didn’t want to know the outcome, even though I had a feeling what it was going to be. Everything from then on out just came in one ear and out the other. I could not fathom the idea that this would ever happen to my family. What did we do to deserve this? What did she ever do to deserve this? I could not think of the answer.
It was confirmed that my mom had breast cancer. There are four stages of cancer and she was already at stage 3. At this point in time that was all we knew. I could not ask any more questions. I had a lump in my throat the size of a baseball. For the first time in my life I was speechless. All 4 of us were.
Later on in the day I finally came to the real world again. We all sat down just like before and we talked about what she was going to do. That was then when she informed us that she was going to have a double mastectomy. A mastectomy means removing both breasts and also removing the cancer. To get rid of the cancer she was going to have chemotherapy once a week for 4 months. After all of that was taken care of, she then would get breast implants. That was then when we learned it was more than we bargained for.
Everything that could have went wrong, did go wrong. Every surgery something went wrong. For example, she got a chemotherapy port put into her chest, which is a device that goes under your skin so the medicine can get into your bloodstream without needing to get poked with needles every time you have a treatment. Her first chemo appointment, her port somehow did not connect up with the machine. There goes another unnecessary surgery. Then, when she got her breasts removed, they took her stomach fat and transported it into one of her breasts. That got infected within the first 48 hours. She then had to go into surgery the next day to have the infection drained. It should have been avoided in the first place. The doctors and the nurses should have caught that when they were checking her every hour; they didn’t. We kept thinking “Oh my God, what else could possibly go wrong?”
Over thanksgiving break is when everything took a turn for the worse. Her implants got infected once again. I went and visited her in the hospital every day. I kept thinking to myself that this may very be the last time I ever get to see her. She just laid in bed, looking weak, fragile, she looked 80 years old when she just turned 40. The person laying there was not my mom. I would talk then she would respond, but with only one or two word answers. It took all she had in her just to say those few words. In between, my questions and her answers I could her hear her breathe heavily. I watched the monitors and examined her heart rate, hoping it didn’t drop down too low, l couldn’t have watched that. When I left after visiting her I remember walking through the parking garage bawling my eyes out. I was always thinking the worst. And so far the worst has happened in my eyes.
Finally, our prayers have been answered; the last surgery worked. None of us could believe it had worked. She was able to come home a couple days after her last surgery. We knew it was going to be tough taking care of someone who physically wasn’t capable of doing anything for themselves; showering, getting dressed and who can’t feed themselves. We didn’t care we were just happy to have her home.
To this day my mom is a 3 year breast cancer survivor. We are so happy she beat the big “C” word. She goes for checkups every 6 months to make sure the cancer hasn’t come back. She just had to last checkup last month and the result for cancer came back negative. We pray every day it will never come back and attack her again. This tragedy made us as a family get along much better, spend a lot more time with each other, and live life like there is no tomorrow.
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