It has been thirteen years, this month, since my husband lost his battle with cancer. The battle lasted only nine months. The loss, for our family, continues.
Persistent allergies turn out to be symptoms of stage four cancer! A board of specialists decided that mom’s heart was too diseased and she could not withstand an operation to remove the cancer.
There is something every doctor dreads. Something that pops into her head every time she sees an unfamiliar set of symptoms or sees a patient numerous times for the same complaint.
“I don’t want you or your sisters to tell anyone that your mother has a brain tumor. We’ll tell people that she had a stroke. It doesn’t sound as bad.”
The scanner operator is telling me to breath in – breath out – breathe in again now hold it. As my breath is held the device whirls around my abdomen and groin on a seek-and-destroy mission from GE. The simple phrase to a normal person would not raise any hairs, but for all survivors and even folks who never did survive, those words pack heat.
Secretly, I think I always wanted to have a moment like that, so I just ran with it. I mean really, how many times in your life does the opportunity to star in your own Lifetime movie present itself?
