It is with a very heavy heart and with great sadness that I post today a week after my mother passed away. On Monday March 17th, ironically St. Patty’s Day, my mother Patricia Ann lost her battle to cancer. While I always aim to make my blog inspiring and motivational, life just isn’t always that way. I wanted to wait a week to post about this news because it was too hard to even put into words that my mother is now gone. Even writing that just now puts a huge pit in my throat and my eyes well up with tears. There is no easy way to say it, losing a parent is like losing half of yourself. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would have one of my parents die. Even seven days later I still think that is just something I am saying, but not something I believe to be true. I don’t comprehend what it means that my mother is now out of my physical life forever. I in some weird way feel like I just haven’t seen her for a few days. Losing a parent is something I find myself explaining to people who ask over and over again “there just are no words.”

My mother was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer back in September 2014. Let’s put it out there, my mother was a smoker, for most of my life I remember my mother smoking cigarettes. She was always very small, never tipping the scale more than 115 pounds. She was active, strong, fit, vibrant, energetic, fierce. She was a no fuzz kind of lady and she didn’t let anyone mess with her children. As a child of divorced parents my mom took on the role sometimes as mom and dad; providing for my brother and I by working one, two and maybe three jobs. She sacrificed fancy clothes or a new pair a jeans, for some braces or pair of glasses for us. My mom was tough as nails, strong willed, “I can do anything” and I think I learned my best lessons in life just by watching her be herself. In the summer of 2014 my mother began having pain in her back near the middle and bottom of her shoulder blade. At first her doctors thought it was a pulled muscle, maybe too much lifting of boxes around the house or yanking weeds in the garden. After a month of no comfort they tried to see if maybe it was a pinched nerve. Two months wasted on non sense tests when finally her primary care doctor did a scan and saw something he thought was troubling. He sent her for scans at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York city for PET scans, CT scans…you name the scan and they probably did it. They found a large mass on her left lung, connected to her larynx and spine. The mass had actually grown into the spine and was pressing into the bone. After a biopsy they found the cancer and that it had also spread into some nearby lymphnodes.

I can’t say that at it hit me at first what that diagnosis meant. I remember it well, sitting on my mother’s couch in the living room with discs and papers in hand and my mom began to cry. She told me that they found a mass and that it was cancer and that she was scared. After the biopsy procedure we knew the next step was treatment; the usual chemotherapy and radiation. During her biopsy they placed a port in her chest which would make injecting chemo and other liquids into her system easier. My mom was scared, it was the first time in my life I could see fear in my mother. I didn’t know how to handle it or what I could do but just be there with her and for her. I still didn’t really understand what any of this meant. It didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks, my mom had cancer. It seems everyone I know has someone they know who has cancer so perhaps it didn’t strike me as serious as it really was. My mom started her therapy a few weeks later at about 105lbs and was already losing weight. She had to do radiation on her chest and back five times a week, every single day Monday through Friday. In a shuttle the hospital would send for her and back home. In the cold weather months of Nov, Dec, Jan. I give her so much credit for doing that for I believe five weeks. Without fail she went everyday in the hopes of putting her cancer into remission, containing it or killing it. She did what she was told, even when she would sometimes be so sick she could barely stand up without wanting to pass out from dizziness or nausea.

She did chemo therapy once a week. I think in total she did five to six rounds of chemo. The chemotherapy was the worst thing I have ever seen. It made my mother throw up everything; pills, water, liquid, food. She went from 109lbs down to 87lbs within 2-3 short months. If you were to ask me I think chemotherapy is just straight poison. You take this medication to get “better” but the entire time you are on it you are sick as a dog and want to roll over and give up. Only to find out in the end most people still wind up dying of cancer anyway, so what is the point? Die of cancer and while you are alive you feel awful? I watched my mom be violently ill all the time. She lost a lot of her hair, though not all of it. She never went bald and she never wanted to shave it. We got her a cute wig that looked identical to her cute bob styled hair cut so no one really knew the difference. I still, a few months into her cancer, had no idea it would get so bad…bad enough to take her life. I was naive, I guess I expected it to just get better. If she was doing treatment, it had to work, she had to get better…

After a few months her doctors claimed her lung cancer was “stable” and she was at the max of her radiation allowed. The said she was also now way too malnourished and frail to continue chemotherapy so they would stop for a period of time. They wanted to wait and then get her on Tarciva, an oral pill form of chemotherapy. My mom was honestly afraid to take it. She was so thin, so frail, she could no longer walk on her own. Her body turned to skin and bones and the lack of activity caused her muscles to atrophy so she could not even hold up her own body weight. One Saturday afternoon while visiting I had to have me and my stepfather lift and carry her to the rest room. I saw every single bone in her body and she was so weak she could barely speak to me. I burst out in tears screaming “this is not okay, what are the doctors doing? is she just supposed to stay like this and try to put weight on? what is next?” Two days later we took my mom into the emergency room. I couldn’t stand the idea that we weren’t doing everything we could to help her. How were her oncologists allowing her to wither away like this without any follow up, updated scans or tests. Was she just supposed to go home and “try to put weight on”, was that her big treatment plan.

When we took her to the ER that Monday she was severely malnourished and dehydrated. I remember it sinking in, my mom is dying and I can’t let her die. I will NOT lose my mom we must find out what is wrong. Her vomiting had gotten so bad she had started to throw up brown and blood colored fluid and that was when the doctors decided to scan her stomach. After a round of scans and ultrasounds they found a 5cm tumor which was blocking her bowel. Not one doctor on her oncology team had any idea that her cancer had spread nor that it was growing in areas of her body that were impacting her health so badly. After finding the tumor we had to decide to operate or just let it be. Of course I was in fight mode and asked my mom if she trusted me to have it removed, she said yes. Within 45 minutes she was whisked away into surgery to remove this massive tumor which was blocking her digestive tract. This was a major reason she couldn’t keep any food down and was constantly ill and losing weight. I thought to myself this was going to save her, we’ve addressed the main problem…now all she has to do is recover from the surgery, get back to eating and that would be it. I was wrong.

The surgery put her into surgical ICU. For about four days she was in and out of what I would called a drugged up coma where they gave her constant pain medicine that she was barely there. One day they gave her a constant drip of pain medicine that she began to hallucinate and panic and see people and things that didn’t exist. I began to believe this was the end. They say in the last days of life you see and say things that are not real, so of course I was hysterical thinking my mom was getting ready to leave me. I prayed and prayed so hard to God to help her out of this dark time. I had everyone I know pray, I was not ready to give up on her. Everyone kept telling me “you’re mother is hallucinating” but I just listened to her. I couldn’t believe some of the lack of compassion I saw in the hospital. Sure she was saying some strange things, but she was so drugged and was in the hospital for over 11 days she was just wanting to go home! The next day when I went to the hospital she was moved out of the ICU and into a regular room. My heart soared. She was back to a “normal” self, less drugs and was now on a very easy liquid diet. she told me she felt “so much better and not so much pain”. For me this meant we were over a big hump; the tumor was out which meant she could eat again without fear of vomiting and losing more weight. This also meant she would be monitored by nurses who could help get her health back up. The hospital is no fun, more than anything my mom just wanted to “be back at home with my things.” To just sit on her favorite recliner on the sofa and watch her lifetime movies and relax. Since she was so weak and could not get up easily she had to have a catheter put in which was painful. Eventually they took that out but that meant she needed constant assistance to get up and onto a bed pan or walked to a restroom. I knew at that point my mother’s pride was likely suffering.

My mom was a very strong minded, independent woman. I know for a fact she never wanted to get to the point where people had to take care of things like helping her to use the rest room, clean her, etc. My mom was young – 56 years young! I know that this cancer was taking from her the basic things that she wanted most in life. The ability to do for herself, not rely on others and to feel her best. Finally they got her on some solid foods and things were looking good. She was in the hospital for a total of about two weeks. My mom went through complete hell in there and never once did she falter or cry or “oh poor me”. I have to say my mom had such dignity through this terrible disease, and I still wonder how she did it without feeling sorry for the hand she was dealt. Her strength was remarkable and something I will always remember even though now she is physically gone. When people ask me how I am so strong, the only answer I can give is that it is her. She gives me strength like I never had, to get through this somehow.

In order to make sure my mom would be taken care of while I am her husband were at work we hired an aid to come and be with her Monday through Friday 9-5. I had taken the entire week off from work when my mom first went into the hospital, the simple thought of leaving her alone at all gave me so much guilt so I really never left. I’d stay for ten to twelve hour shifts, only to go home to sleep and then return. I knew she needed me, even if it was just a foot massage, getting her ice chips, rubbing her hair or watching her sleep. You cannot let anyone you love go through cancer alone, the moral support is so crucial to keeping them going. Her  aid was amazing, she and my mom hit it off right away. At least I knew during the day time she had a companion to talk to, hang out with and could help her with her medicine, to get up to the bathroom, etc. My mom was still shy of 85lbs and her legs and one arm were no longer working. This may have been the  result of the shingles she developed early on, the 3 brain mets they found in her brain while in the hospital or from the malnutrition. Either way, she could not get out of the chair alone and needed constant assistance. This I know bothered her, she cried to me one day and said “I just don’t feel human anymore” –  to have to depend on someone all the time was not easy for her. My mom returned home on Saturday March 2…and the first week went really well.

Being at home made her feel comfortable. She was in her chair, with her things, watching her tv – something that we all take for granted. She slept well, she felt better, she was continuing to eat and take her medicine. We talked about furthering her treatment, she assured me once she got strong again we would go back and do radiation on the brain to attack the brain mets. I told her that was okay, let’s wait and get there when we get there. All I wanted at that point was to see a nice progress for my mom. For her to no longer be so violently ill from all the chemo and drugs, for her to put some meat back onto her bones, to feel like a “human” again. We enjoyed many nights during that first week; I gave her a manicure and pedicure, washed her hair and did a hair cut, we watched movies and just relaxed. It felt so good and I was so optimistic. I truly believed that removing this stomach tumor was going to be the answer to our prayers. She would be back on the mend, and then it happened…

The thing with cancer is once it gets into your system, it literally just takes over. Cancer hides in your body and is not detected by your body’s own immune system so your body never knows to attack and kill it. It isn’t perceived as a “foreign body” like a virus or a cold, so it just sit and latches on and never lets go. Sure chemotherapy and radiation may work for a lot of people. It didn’t work for my mom, and as sad as it is to say, it truly did make her 7 months with the disease terrible. She was diagnosed with Stage 3A lung cancer in August/September 2014 and passed away on March 17, 2015. That is only about seven months time to go from 118lbs to what I perceive to have been around 87lbs in the end. The chemotherapy make her violently ill, tired, weak, sick. The radiation was so strong it burned her skin and cause so much irritation in her throat she had a hard time swallowing food. I look back now and wish we also tried some more holistic approaches. One night my mother was admitted into the hospital for dehydration. This happened a handful of times during her cancer. She was so severely dehydrated she needed IV fluids for a few days. While I visited her one such time a man in the room next to us was visiting his wife who had cancer as well. I will never forget what he said to me, “chemo is poison. if the cancer doesn’t kill you the chemo will.” It haunts me to this day what he said, and by the looks of his wife I’d probably say she has gone to Heaven as well.

My mom’s lung cancer spread to her lymphnodes, stomach and brain. They say that if you have lung cancer you have a 40-50% chance of also developing brain mets. I didn’t know that and her oncology team never bothered to keep checking to see if her cancer had spread. It wasn’t until she was in the hospital that last time that I asked them to scan her bones, brain and the rest of her body. I couldn’t believe I had to tell THEM to check her body to see if it was spreading. To them she was “an advanced cancer” and gave me a “well it is what it is” type of look and answer. I was disgusted, was I the only one advocating for my mother’s care. Anyway, back to my mom at home…like I said the first week was okay. She was in great spirits, we were getting a lot done, she was giving orders, asking for things, I loved it. She still had staples in her stomach from her stomach surgery so on the following Monday her oncologist came to visit to remove them and do a house visit. Something very significant happened on that Monday as well. My mother always sat and slept in her one favorite spot on the couch, in her recliner. After her visit with her doctor that day she asked to move to the opposite couch to lay down. It at the time didn’t seem like a big deal, but now as I look back and try to pin point things day by day I noticed that was the day that it was all going to go down hill.

On that Monday March 10th her oncologist recommended to have hospice care begin. He thought there was no more treatment to be done and that we should just work to make her comfortable. This is the worst possible thing a child or family member can hear. Your team of doctors have lost hope, they think there is nothing else you can do and well just get them nice and comfy so they can die. For me I didn’t understand, how can’t you help? What can she do? Can she take Tarceva (the oral chemo medication she already had ready to start taking)? Do we try to help her get her weight up and try some radiation? All indications were saying no, I didn’t know how to handle that. I don’t believe at the time I even wanted to admit that were true either. I knew my mother was sick, very sick, but I didn’t think she was “dying” at least not in the next week. We started to call around our county to find hospice care to come in and evaluate my mom, and that took a long time. We didn’t realize they had to be in your county, some insurance covers it, some doesn’t. My mom was too young to be on Medicaid or Medicare so we only qualified for a certain amount of days.

That Monday when I visited my mom was back to throwing up again. Violently ill, from anything; water, medicine, chicken broth, etc. We were right back to square one. I thought the tumor removal would help, but I guess not. Her body was rejecting everything and now my mom was afraid to eat or drink anything again. Her body was so weak and tired and dehydrated. Though she would try to drink water, juice and some fruit pops for me, I knew it was only because she wanted to make me happy. Most of the next few days were spent with her sleeping a lot. She was so fatigued she could no longer move at all anymore on her own. Changing her clothes, lifting her up was an entire process and I knew she was dying when she no longer was embarrassed to let me help her with everything. You find that when the roles are reversed you somehow find the strength to do anything and everything to help you parent if they are sick. I was able to lift my mother, move her, clean her, bathe her, everything and anything she needed. I owed her that, I wanted to do that, I love her too much NOT to do that and be there for her. Most of the time she was cold, so we wrapped her in tons of blankets. She didn’t take lots of pain medicine but I would ask if she needed it and she would usually say yes. She began to get bad headaches in the last few days, so sleep and morphine pills helped with that.

During all of this I started to look up “what happens in the last days of life” or “what happens near death” and slowly it became real, so real, that in front of my eyes my mom was dying. She began to stop eating food, she no longer wanted to take her medicine, she was no longer thirsty, she slept a lot and was always cold. Her lack of energy had her bed ridden and soon hospice said we should use adult diapers to make sure she didn’t have to be carried to a small portable bathroom. Watching my mother go through this was a nightmare, to see the woman I knew to be the strongest woman in the world have to be tortured in this body was agony. I wanted to just lift all of her pain and sickness away, even take it onto myself for her. She never talked of death, or fear, or nervousness. I think that comes from being my mom and wanting to protect me. I would lay with her and hold her hand, rub her hair and stroke her arms. Talk to her soothingly and tell her how proud I was of her and how much I loved her. I tried to feed her ice or ice pops but eventually I knew this would probably be uncomfortable for her. When the body prepares to leave this world it has a process it goes through, and you don’t want to disturb it. If she didn’t want food anymore I wasn’t going to force her. My job in the end was to make sure she was not alone, ever, during her transition. That was the best gift I could give to her, to make sure she knew how loved she was by me and that if it was time to go Home to God I would respect her wishes.

About three days before she passed she stopped really being able to speak. Words were challenging as they took up a lot of energy. That was so hard to deal with, all I wanted was to talk with her, not just to her. I continued to talk to her and make her feel loved. Her breathing became very different, very labored and noisy. They call it a “death rattle” and when I heard it I knew what was soon to come. Slowly in the next 3 days I saw my mom’s body change and it was as if in front of my eyes I knew she was leaving me. I made sure to pray with her, tell her what an amazing mom she was to me; all the things I knew she would need to hear. They say that when someone is dying they will “wait for the one” or the “ones” they want to be with when they leave this earth. My mom waited to share that moment with me. I remember watching her on the couch and thinking to myself how scary this all way, but more importantly I wanted to know so badly what was going on in her mind. Was she scared? Was she calm and relaxed? I knew she could hear me, so i just kept talking and talking for hours. I got to her house at around 5pm and she was pronounced dead at 1:04am. For those 8 hours I never left her, I stayed with her and rubbed her hair. I held her hand and talked to her. It didn’t occur to me then that tomorrow she would be gone. It’s like an out of body experience you just go through, for them, to make sure THEY are okay. With cancer, it is not about you, it is about them. You want to help them and be there for them!

On her last day I knew something was different, I knew it in my gut. I packed a bag of clothes and planned to sleep over, spend as much time as she had left with her. At the time I thought it might be a few days. When I arrived I could hear her breathing across the room. When I saw her my heart broke, and my thoughts shifted from “Please God save my mom and let her live” to “Please God, please no longer make her suffer and give her peace”. It’s the hardest thing to explain, but watching her on that last day, suffering so much from this cancer that riddle her tiny body, I just wanted her to be at rest and free. She could not speak, her vision was so distant, she just lay and grab for me and try to hold me. I must of held her for hours and stayed right by her side all night. I told her many things that no one ever heard, I made sure every possible thing she needed to hear was said.

My mother lived a tough life, but she also made an amazing life for me and my brother. I made sure during her time in the hospital that she had peace with anyone who may have been absent from her life for awhile. I knew that would be important in order for her to go on to Heaven. I made sure to be there as her strength when she was ready to go. Around 12:45pm my mother’s breathing changed from very loud and labored, to soft and muted. I was on the floor in front of her on the couch, holding her hand and rubbing her hair, looking directly into her eyes. She focused on me and I spoke so many things to her and slowly I watched as her breathing slowed and then never returned. I lost my mother that night, and it took me over 20 minutes to get up and let her hand go. In the end, when our hands were released we both had indents from how hard we were grasping one another. As I stood and watched my mother’s lifeless body I knew she was free. Free of this terrible pain and sickness, free of the drugs and the discomfort and the constant tests. I knew that as she lifted into Heaven she would be happy and that her journey her was done.

Cancer is one of the hardest things to watch a family member go through. To see my mother battle the way she did, I can’t even describe the admiration I have for her. I love her with all of my heart, she was my best friend and I was always her baby girl. In the months of her illness I was able to give her something that I know meant so much to her, as it did to me, the ability for me to give back to her in some small way all she had given to me growing up. It was a honor for me to be there to care and love her during this time of her life. I don’t know if I was told I had cancer that was untreatable how I would have handled it, but she did it with grace and dignity. It’s been two weeks now since my mother passed away from cancer. I can’t even begin to tell you how I feel; one minute I’m sobbing like a baby so hard I shake and squeal and double over in anguish. One minute I am smiling and at peace knowing she is no longer in that body suffering. Another minute I am angry that she was so young and it was right before so many big moments of my life I needed her there for; wedding, babies, etc. I know the grieving process will take time, I know life will NEVER be the same. I hope that in some small way my story of what I have and what I am going through can open up a conversation for other sons and daughters watching their parents going through cancer or who have lost a parent to cancer. I know that every day of my life I miss her and will try to find some way to give back to others in her name.

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