Lordy Lord

Well, GiG knew alright. I am writing from yet another hospital room. I set my alarm for 6am this morning so I would have plenty of time to prep for a full day back at chemo, and when I went downstairs my mom was sitting straight up on the couch, having been awake for hours with severe pain (and later vomiting). Fifteen minutes later my dad, mom and I were sitting around the kitchen table discussing how she could possibly endure chemo and the hell that would come just from that on top of the pain she was already enduring (and enduring on top of two separate pain meds at that). The last two times my mom wavered about doing chemo, the last two times she had a sense that something was going wrong, indeed something was (first the pulmonary embolism and then the pneumonitis), so my only advice to her to trust was to trust her instincts. (“This is your body, not some work project that needs completing,” I said). When she called the oncology office to say that she wouldn’t be coming, they told her to go to the hospital (which is connected to the cancer center) to be admitted so they could work full-time to alleviate and track down the pain. She’s down getting a CAT scan now with the hope of figuring out what’s going on (and the even bigger hope that it is nothing terribly serious).

So, that’s where we are now; a real-life House episode.

When my mom got the positive PET scan results the other day, most of her loved ones were overjoyed. The fact that this news was delivered while she was in the ER, tempered my reaction as well as my father’s. Regardless of what a test says, if you feel bad, you feel bad so (as my gut told me from the start) until this pain passes, I can’t join in the celebration.

Shortly after we got my mom into her hospital room, IV in place, she recounted a story of how years ago when she injured her knee and was given Dilaudid---the med she is on now---for pain before having it popped it back into place, she had joked, “I want this if I ever get cancer.”

Funny stuff.

There are laughs to be had though.

The hospital she’s in is a Catholic one so a Chaplain just came in (or a Sister...I’m not sure how this ranking system goes; I think she might be the equivalent of a lieutenant to Jesus) to offer my mom prayer and ask her if she wanted a priest to come tomorrow for “the anointing of the sick” (to which---to her cynical daughter’s shock and awe---she said yes. You can take the girl out of Bethlehem...) When the Chaplain left, but with the quiet solemnity of her presence still in the room, my dad said, “And I’m going to sacrifice a goat for you.”

Maybe you had to be there, but there’s nothing like a little sacrilege to lighten the mood. I was grateful he said something because for a second I thought I was in a different family than the religiously ambiguous, if not dubious, one than I was born into. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t go looking a gift-nun in the mouth. Plus, raised Catholic as she was, I think my mom still feels the connection to these roots. Prayer is prayer. I kid, but it’s a nice thing they do here.

So, that’s the story. I know some of you check in here just for her status (and, shockingly, not to hear about my hair) so I’ll give you the facts when I can, provided we get ‘em.

For now, Peace Be With You.