Add some Lemon Juice to that Burn Please

   Next up in our epic saga kiddies is the sad tale of August 12th. This day was a Wednesday. I need to back up a little and tell you about my mom. My mom has had brain tumors since 2000. To present she has had 11 tumors. She has had three surgeries and I believe two or three bouts of different radiations, gamma knife and nouvalis. Starting last summer, the surgeons in Omaha decided they couldn’t touch tumor number 6 and sent her to their teacher in Houston. This doctor in Houston was fantastic and got the tumor out and mom was back to her old self in a less than three days. That is speedy considering the trauma she went through with her first surgery in 2000.

   This summer the same surgeons said, “Uh no, let’s let Houston deal with these ones.” Now she had tumor 7, 8 and 9. When the Houston surgeon did the surgery, it turns out she really had 5 tumors, bringing her to magic number 11 and more bad news, he could not get them all out.


   Let’s return to August 12th. That was her surgery date this year. I learned from my anxiety on surgery day last year and took the day off instead to not worry so much. From communications with my dad I learned she went to the prep area, which is like a waiting room for prepped patients and they wheel them off one at a time, at about 6am. She was to start surgery at about 8am; I think they started at 9am, so pretty good considering the amount of traffic they had that morning.


   At about 9:45am I get a call from my aunt, my mother’s sister. I figure she wanted an update on the surgery, but I didn’t have any info yet. Hence, I was joking around with her on the phone. She told me my grandfather had died that morning. He was in and out of hospitals back in New York for a few weeks with a combination of Lymphoma and Pneumonia. Now, we did know that he was in the hospital and my grandmother asked my mother to come see him because they knew the end was near. But my mother was less than three days away from leaving for surgery with my dad. They really had no way to do it and my dad needed me at home for bills, communications, etc. Simply put, it was just bad timing. I’m sure people can scold us for that, but if you were in our shoes, you would understand.


   Needless to say, this was a terrible day. I found out a few hours later that mom came out okay, but the surgeons did not get all of the tumors and there were five instead of the three they saw on the MRI. I suppose getting all the bad news in one day is better than having two horrible days in a row. That was one sucky day; I’d say the worst of this year so far. I hope nothing tops that day, because to top that day the sky would have to rain fire or something. As far as Mom, that is another entry, but she had to start chemotherapy for the tumor remnants.




My Grandmother gave me a very apt pin that simply says “Cancer Sucks”