When Words Aren't Enough

My mom is dying.

Just typing that doesn't seem real. Doesn't feel possible.

My smart, funny, beautiful, loving, humble, gracious mother sang "Happy birthday" to my twin brother and me for the last time tonight.

Barring a miracle, today was my last birthday with my mom.

I'm only 28. My younger brother is only 23. I secretly feel guilty about how much more time my twin brother and I had with her. Mom went back to work when I was in middle school. I had a SAHM for the first 12 or so years of my life.

I cry at the most random times.

I also suddenly understand maybe how family members can fight over family possessions. I'm sure my mom's sisters won't all be thrilled that she's leaving me most of her diamond and sapphire jewelry, although I did suggest my SIL (twin's wife) receive one of the two necklaces. I'm also sure my mom's sisters won't believe that I care about the stories behind her jewelry. I don't want the jewels; I want the ring my parents picked out together when they got engaged. I want the earrings Daddy gave Mommy for their first anniversary, especially since he totally faked her out. I want the bracelet Daddy used to break the news to Mom that we were leaving sunny California for small town South. These are the stories I've made my parents tell me time after time, year after year. They're the stories I'll tell anyone who will listen when I want to share how much my parents love each other.

I want to know all the stories, and now I'm scared that I  won't know which questions to ask my mom before it's too late. I went through a few old battered pieces that I knew had stories and wrote them down with her the other day.

My mom's mom, my last surviving grandparent, died last September. Which of her stories are  now lost?

I'm home for a week, and my goal is to help my mom write her book, The Gifts of Brain Cancer.

While I love how loved she is, and how so many people want to visit her, I also want to shoo everyone away and just let me sit with my mom and get her book on paper.

I know where to go to get it formatted. I know where to look to hire a book cover designer. I know the entire process of getting her book on Amazon as a self-published work.

But she has to write it first, and I have to help her.

She's lost total mobility on her left side. She's still doing what she can with her right arm, but she's so incredibly weak. At least she's write-handed, so she can write things if needed. But her handwriting is atrocious, and there just isn't time to let her hand write the rest of her book. She's already spent a few hours with a good friend of hers, going through the handwritten pages she's done so far, and letting her friend type them up.

I hope one day I can be surrounded by bouquets of beautiful flowers for a happy reason, or no reason at all. I'm not even sure how many we have now. Five? But it seems like you only get showered with flowers when your world is falling down around you.

I feel like I've been so callous and uncaring in the past when people my age lost parents. Yes, I knew it was sad, and tragic, especially one neighbor who lost both of her parents to cancer within a few years of each other. But I didn't get it. If I met someone who already was without a parent, I spared a short thought, "That sucks" and moved on.

My dad was around my age, if not younger, when his dad died. I always knew my grandfather died young, in only his 50s, and I always wished I could have known him. But I was thinking about my grandmother. I never thought about what it was like for my dad to lose his dad in his 20s.

It doesn't seem real. It can't be real. Only my grandmother could out-sparkle and out-purple my mom.

I feel like I'm going to be the only one left. Yes, I'm my father's daughter in many ways, but I'm a Norwegian woman. I've always felt a special bond between me, my mom, and my grandma. I call us by my grandma's maiden name, not her married name aka my mom's maiden name.

I wanted so much to have my mom with me whenever I have a baby. I've wanted my own baby for so long, but Beau and I wanted a few years to adjust to married life. Plus my Crohn's has been so bad that my body probably couldn't healthily gestate a fetus right now if I tried.

My grandma stayed with my parents for six weeks when my twin brother and I were born. I always hoped my mom would stay with me for a few weeks when it was my turn.

I wish I could stay with my parents longer than a week. But I have to start Remicaide (an IV infusion of several hours) next Tuesday. At least I'll be back, with Beau and his parents, the last weekend in June.

My parents accept planning that far in advance, so I'm very cautiously optimistic that I'll have my mom for a few more weeks. The doctors wouldn't or couldn't give us a timeline.

If you've read my ramblings all the way through, thank you. Please keep my mom, my dad, and our whole family in your thoughts and prayers.

Love is for Better, for Worse

12 weeks ago today, my husband and I stood before God and our family and exchanged our wedding vows. 

This past week has definitely been a challenge, but Beau exhibited his love for me every single day.

My birthday was Sunday. I was sick. My husband and I left the bed & breakfast early. At home we discovered an ant infestation, and I freaked out. My dear sweet husband insisted I go upstairs and shower while he took care of all the ants. 

Early Monday morning, my fever was so bad that I was shaking uncontrollably in a desperate attempt to get warm. I couldn't stop shaking. Beau and I were both scared, and he insisted on driving me to the ER. Some Tylenol, some IV fluids, and many tests later, the ER doctor discharged me with the conclusion that I had a viral infection. I slept the rest of the day. Beau came home from work with treats for me: ginger ale, apple sauce, and red Popsicles. 

Monday night, my mom called me to let me know her mom, my sole surviving grandparent, was put into hospice this week. Beau held my hand while we listened to my mom on speakerphone, and he hugged me while I cried afterward. Then he asked me what I wanted to do, and when I said watch Star Trek, he held me while we did that.

Tuesday I felt well enough to work, since I do work from home, but I was still tired and feverish. Beau made me chicken noodle soup for lunch. 

Wednesday I felt completely better... until it was time to do a few chores after dinner to prep for our AC installation on Thursday. After just 30 minutes of loading the dishwasher and putting away laundry, extremely light housework, I was out-of-breath and ready for bed. Beau finished all the chores that we needed to get done that night. 

Even just writing out this description of how he took care of me while I was sick inadequately describes everything he's done for me this week. He has been my rock during this whole terrifying ordeal with my mom's cancer, and I know he'll continue to comfort me as she starts radiation and chemotherapy the week after next.

Our spouses are not only for the good times, but for the bad. I feel so incredibly blessed to have a man like Beau as my husband.

Thanks for All the Prayers, Love, and Support

My mom is doing great!

The hospital discharged her on Friday, only two days after her surgery. My dad is having to remind her at home not to do too much because she's trying to cook and to clean. I mean, it's great that she's recovering quickly, but she needs to not overdo it! 

It's hard being so far away from my family. Being a plane ride away sucks. I know Beau and I are very lucky that he could take four days off work to spend time with my family and that I could work part-time hours remotely for two weeks. I just wish that we could drive to visit my parents, like my twin brother and his fiancée can. 

Anyway.

I want to thank all of you for the sweet comments y'all have left me in the last two weeks. I especially want to thank y'all for the prayers for my mom and for our family. We're big believers in science, but we're bigger believers in God. We know that science and technology are tools that God uses for healing. 

I'm not sure when my mom's next follow-up appointment is, or when she'll start chemotherapy and/or radiation, but please keep praying for that. This is only the beginning of a long journey towards good health.

Life is for the Living

I'm blogging from my iPhone for the first time ever. I'm staying with my best friend Rose and her husband Landon, in their new house, and they haven't set up wifi yet. 

Blogging is sometimes complicated and unexpected, just like life. 

I separated all the church flowers into several small bouquets, at the bequest of my mom.

May was supposed to be my perfect month of blogging. I have an ad up at The Life of Bon, and I wanted my blog to look nice and shiny and well maintained for any new visitors. I had more wedding posts and travel posts planned, with lots of pictures that y'all apparently prefer. 

I was supposed to have a guest post at The Life of Bon two Fridays ago, but Bonnie ran into technical difficulties. I had stayed up late to write a killer post for my own blog that day that was authentic, but would still ease in potential new readers. I didn't want to scare anyone off with a feminist analysis of honeymoon sex, but I didn't want to be all lah dee dah I'm pretty look at me--I save that for Instagram. 

But fate intervened, and I'm trying to sway new readers with a late-night rushed post from my iPhone. 

This year was supposed to be perfect for my mom. She quit her stressful job, I got married in March, we celebrated my marriage at three receptions in April, my little brother graduated college in May, and my twin brother is getting married in October. Oh, and my parents finally sold their first house, which has been an albatross of a rental home for almost 30 years. 

And then she got diagnosed with brain cancer, less than two years after my twin brother's diagnosis. 

Yet, even faced with possibly the worst news of her life, my mom's faith never wavered. I'm not sure who has a stronger faith--Mom or Grandma--but they are both so strong, even in the worst of circumstances. 

Our minister came to the house on Monday, with an elder, and annointed my mom with oil. This is unusual for Presbyterians, but it is biblical, somewhere in James. My mom told our pastor that the insurance delay with the surgery brought her one of the best weeks of her life, one in which she got to spend time with her entire immediate family, including my husband and my FSIL. And apparently she reached a level of peace and clarity in her relationship with God that she had never known before. 

At this point, I'm dying to be back in the Midwest with my husband and the life we're building there. I want to return to a routine of work, chores, Star Trek: Voyager, sex, friends, and my blog. When I fly back on Saturday, I will have been in my southern home state for two weeks, half of that time without Beau. 

But I've learned that sometimes you can drop everything. You can throw your schedule and your lists out the window to focus on what's important. We think that our jobs and our chores and our daily schedules are so so so important, but they're not. 

Unless you're a neurosurgeon, then yes, you are important, and thank you for now having saved two lives in my family. 

So sometimes I will blog four times a week. Sometimes I will blog only four times a month. It is important to me that I take some time to write about my life. 

But it's more important for me to LIVE my life while I can, a lesson I hope not to relearn anytime soon. 

Jumbled Thoughts on my Mom's Cancer

Tomorrow... well, today, since it's after midnight, my mom will finally have her surgery, after the whole insurance debacle. She and Daddy met with the neurosurgeon out-of-town last Thursday, and they felt very good and confident after meeting with him. We hope she will be discharged as early as Saturday.

It's been good if weird being at home (the South) for over a week now. Beau left on Sunday, since he had to go back to work this week. I go back to the Midwest on Saturday. The whole family being together was nice, but stressful. Like I love my aunt whose visiting, but sometimes I want to strangle her. But other times she's so interesting and tells me the best stories about her own feminist activism. Strong personalities. My family is full of them, and when we're all together and super-emotional, it's a little chaotic. 

One of my mom's best friends created a hashtag and requested selfies for my mom. We've received pictures of family and of strangers holding up signs in Paris and all across the United States. Everyone is praying for my mom. I've cried a lot, humbled by the outpouring of love.

I really miss my husband. Sleeping alone sucks. He was such a comfort to me while he was here. 

I won't be totally alone. I'm spending the next three nights with Rose and Landon. Silver lining and stuff. Landon is in a play. Rose saw him Opening Night, but we're going again Thursday night. It will be a nice distraction after spending all day in the hospital, most likely.

This is super stream-of-consciousness, but I just have all these thoughts about my mom and cancer and our family and I don't know what else to write.

Pray Like You've Never Prayed Before

Last Wednesday my parents called and told me that my mom has brain cancer, with a Grade 4 tumor.

This is the second person in our family to get brain cancer. My twin brother was diagnosed with a Grade 2 brain tumor two years ago. And yes, my younger brother and I plan on speaking with the neurosurgeon this week to see if we need genetic testing or an MRI, because this much brain cancer is straight-up weird. 

Almost the whole family spent today together. My twin brother and future sister-in-law showed up at the house Saturday night. My aunt and I showed up late Sunday night. Beau just arrived at the airport an hour ago, but he'll be with us first thing tomorrow morning, to avoid waking anyone up.

My mom was scheduled to have surgery tomorrow in our local hospital, but because her neurosurgeons (the same ones who operated on my twin brother in 2012) are out-of-network, her insurance won't cover the procedure. The neurosurgeons have already offered to waive their fees and do the surgery for free. Regardless, the insurance won't cover the surgery, even though the hospital is in-network.

She has to have the surgery this week. Postponing the surgery a day or two is okay, but this is a fast-growth, malignant tumor that did not show up on her MRI six months ago. She will need radiation and chemo afterward. The sooner she can have this removed, the better.

We are trying to figure out an acceptable combination of neurosurgeons and hospitals that will be covered by insurance and will have the experience and technology necessary for a successful surgery. We are all extremely upset that she can't have her neurosurgeons, in our local hospital, perform the surgery. 

Please pray for my mom and my family. Please pray that the insurance gets worked out. Please pray that everything will be okay.