My Mother is an awesome woman. She always saw the good in everything. She is a very exceptional person. A fighter. She has worked very hard her entire life then it all came to an end May 2012. When I was little one my mother worked nights at a factory, and my father drove truck. Until my sister was old enough to stay home and watch me, we went to our grandmas and stayed. My mother had an outgoing personality, but she also had many other personalities. What mother doesn’t? Most of all she is a very understanding woman. You couldn’t ask for a better person. She worked several different jobs while I was growing up.
The last job she worked was Dollar General. She started off just being a sales clerk in 2003. Then a few years later she became store manager. My opinion you couldn’t ask for a better manager. There were days she worked open to close, because one of the employees couldn’t make it in. she was working on her seventh or eighth year when she started having problems. Her lower back started hurting bad and legs were starting to swell. She had been to the doctor several times, but all they kept giving her was pain pills. The doctor said he would order an MRI and never did.
After messing with this doctor for about six months to a year, my sister and I got tired of her hurting all the time and found a new doctor. A better doctor at that. She treated mom a lot better. Mom explained what was going on, and within a week she had and MRI scheduled for her. The MRI came back showing something on her kidney. So following that they done a biopsy. We had to wait at least two weeks before we found out the results. It wasn’t good news. The spot on her right kidney came back as cancerous. It ended up being a three inch mass. We went to doctors after doctors to see what would be best for her.
After seeing several doctors and running more test they had found more cancer. Three spots on her skull (not her brain). Some on her spine and one rib. The kidney doctor told us if she didn’t do anything with the kidney she only had an estimate of five years. The neurologist said that if they didn’t get her back taken care of as soon as possible, she wouldn’t be walking in two to three months. She wasn’t having that. So on May 25th, 2012 she went into surgery for a long seven hours. She obviously pulled through it. It has been a long recovery. Her back still hasn’t healed up and its been over a year.
We have been fighting staph infections ever since the back surgery. After her being out back in the hospital for the fourth or fifth time, we decided it was time to find different doctors. We even switched hospitals completely. Mom does have a wound vac on and has for quite a while and will have until the wound heals up. It’s doing an awesome job of healing her back up, considering her chemotherapy and diabetes. Those make it even harder for a wound to heal. it has made a huge progress since this all started. It’s been over a year since all this has happened and she’s doing a lot better.
Like I said she’s a fighter. She has done ten treatments of radiation. Then started taking chemo through her port. It has been prolonged several times from having the infection’s and surgeries and being in the hospital. Just recently she got to take the wound vac off for a week. The doctors called it a vacation for her, because it was starting to deteriate her skin around her wound. Her chemo doctor had takien a loqok at her wound and thought it looked bad. Granted he hadn’t seen it for over a month or longer so he hadn’t seen the progress it was doing. He thought it look horrible.
He demanded that she get put back in the hospital. So I rushed her down there the same day. He wanted her there by two but that didn’t happen. I had to bring her back home and get clothes gathered up fopr her and other things, because we didn’t know how long they were going to keep her. We ended up getting there about five pm and got her signed in and put in her room. They put her in isolation, which we didn’t understand. After we seen the nurses and asked why, they told us it was because she previously had staph infection. Which was very understandable.
Mom ended up being in there for three days Wednesday through Saturday. All her doctors had been in there to see her and none of them could figure out why she was even in the hospital. I’m glad it happened though. The doctors ended up running bone scans, MRI’S and x-rays. They ended up finding more cancer in her right leg below her knee. Also found out her fibula is broken. The doctors couldn’t explain how it got broken, but with her bones being so weak from the chemo, it could have been anything. They also found some abnormalities in her lower back. The doctors wasn’t 100% sure if it was cancer either.
I took her down on Wednesday and they let her out that following Saturday. The following Monday they started radiation on her lower back just to be on the safe side and on her right leg. She got five treatments on her leg and ten on her back. When they done the scans on her they found out the chemo through the iv wasn’t working cuz her cancer had gotten bigger. After it had shrunk a little bit. So now the chemo doctor wants to put her on the chemo pill and hope and prays that it works. Ive not heard very good things about the chemo pill. I just hope it does her good.
When we found out that mom had cancer the one thing she said she wanted before something happened to her, was that her two daughters give her grandchildren. A little boy and a little girl. After both my sister and I got told we couldn’t have kids. To our surprise we both ended up having grandchildren for her. We found out on Christmas that my sister was pregnant. So that was part of moms Christmas present. Then I found out I was pregnant on mother’s day, so that was her mother’s day present from me. My sister was due September 2nd and ended up having her little girl a month early.
I was due the day before moms birthday and I ended up having my little boy on my dad’s birthday, three days after Christmas. God must work in mysterious ways because mom got what she wanted. I believe if it wasn’t for us having her grandchildren she wouldn’t be where she is today. If it wasn’t for my mother I wouldn’t be who I am today and where I am at in life. She is such a wonderful person and I love her very much. After going through this with her makes me think twice about some choices I’ve made in my life. Your time is limited and you need to follow your dreams.