On January 2nd, I flew with my mom to Texas for her alternative treatment with Dr. Burzinski in Houston. By now her Breast Cancer had spread to her liver and she had run through chemo treatments that did not help, but left her bald and weak. This was her second bought of cancer. The first had been 3 years earlier? I was in my first year of college when she got diagnosed and in my last when she died, so however that works out....
The alternative treatment involved a pump and a catheter. She had a catheter in her chest and a pump that she or I would hook up with a small hose. The medicine was called neoplastines and it had an odd smell. It was made from plants. A clear liquid. The pump sat in a fanny pack that she could wear around her waist. It made a quiet pumping sound.
Her liver had gotten very bad and she was going to have a catheter put directly into her liver so that the neoplastines could "blast" her liver and get rid of the cancer. We arrived on the 2nd. They did tests. A week later, they decided that her liver was not functioning well enough to do the treatment. We sat in a room in the doctors office and they told us that there was "nothing left to do" and that we should just "go home to be with friends and family." And that was that. They left the room. My mother and I looked at each other. Her face was so pained, so sad. Total dissapointment, regret, grief, sorrow, worry..... I can only imagine what my face looked like.
By then, her liver was not working well, she was very weak. She was seeing spots. She could not think of words. She was a little paranoid.
She set and rechecked over and over two alarm clocks to be sure we would not miss our flight in the morning.
I lay in bed all night listening to her breath. Praying all night that she not die here in Texas with me, leaving me by myself. I did not know what that would mean. How would I get her home? How would I get home? When could we get home? What would I do? Who would I call? The relief I felt when the sun came up.
Amy Minor was a graduate student that wrote her thesis on my mom and lived in Houston. She had been in contact with my mom about her thesis and they had met on an earlier trip. Amy was a mormon and she had come over to pray for my mom. She drove us to the airport that morning.
My uncle David picked us up at the airport. My mother rode in a wheel chair. She kept saying that she wanted her brother David.
We made it home. Both of us breathing, alive.
Comments
Post a Comment