She's Gone

My mother passed away Monday, November 1, 2010 at 6:00 pm.


I had flown in on October 20th because she had been hospitalized from a breathing incident she had the day before. She was released the day I flew in and later the same day, she received a hospital bed and other equipment to her house from Hospice.

Watching her struggle during this time was the most painful experience I have ever had. I have never felt so helpless in my entire life. My gosh, she had such fight in her but there was also another side of her that didn’t want to fight anymore. She was so tired.

The last three days of her life, she had taken such a drastic turn for the worse. I slept with one eye open on her bedroom floor and then, her first which was also her last night at a hospice hospital. She kept wanting to get up and go somewhere but her poor legs could not have taken her anywhere. I had to get up all night long and remind her that she needed to let her weak legs rest and that we’ll talk and watch the news in the morning.

The night before she passed away at the hospice hospital, I received a not-so-lovely email that I won’t go into. I was on the edge of my mother’s life. When I read it, I felt my face grow hot… then deep tingling in my fingers and then they went numb, contorted and froze until I could calm down. The nurse said I had hyperventilated. Never heard of that happening before but I guess stress can do a lot of things. Unfortunately, things had happened so quickly over those past few days that I was only focused on doing what my mother needed. I couldn’t leave her for a minute because she would pull off her oxygen or try to walk somewhere and surely fall. My mother needed things from me that I never thought would happen until much later in life. She had only recently turned 65. It was not supposed to be this way yet.

Earlier in the day that my mother died, her nurse came in to talk to me in her room. She told me that she believes my mother can hear her so she is going to tell me things she would also like my mother to know. The nurse explained some medical things and then told me the following: “Since you are here all day, you need to know that most patients will wait until their loved one(s) have left their room before they pass. It happens more often than not. A family will tell the patient that they are stepping out for a 30 minute lunch… but when they come back, that person will have died. You need to go for walks”.

A little later the same day, a hospice nurse (Marie, who had spent 3 hours with us the day before on a Sunday) dropped by her room. She went up to her, wiped some hair from her forehead and told her “it’s OK to go. Go into the spirit world. God bless you”. When Marie left, I kissed my mother’s hand and told her the same thing… “it’s OK to go”. As my mother was a fairly non-religious person, I told her… “be with Grandma and be with your brother. You will see the face of God and you will love Him as much as He loves you”.

I then went into the Sanctuary to talk to my husband and children on the phone. When I came back into my mother’s room, I felt “stillness”. It could actually be felt. I stood there and watched her… just stillness. I went over and kissed her hand again, told her I loved her and to have peace. No more fighting to breathe, no more struggling to walk, no more pain and no more endless nights. Just stillness and peace.

This blog was supposed to be about my mother’s experience with an alternative to American cancer treatment and those results. It now ends up being a public goodbye. She was concerned about the money she spent in Korea ($100,000 is not cheap) but as they say, “you can’t take it with you” and it did give us those four weeks of time together and that is priceless. My mind, heart and emotion will need to take me back before she became sick and remember so much good that enveloped her. She was a good person in every sense of the word. Kind to everyone and never judged. Cancer did not and does not define her.

Just a few days before I flew to be with her, we spoke on the phone. She told me how obvious it was that I loved her. I promised her that it would never be even a fraction less than obvious.

I wrote this poem years ago for an extraordinary woman, my mother, from a daughter that loves her.

“It’s my first Mother’s Day… as a Mom, that is
And I can’t help but recall when I was a kid.
As I sift back through those memories,
I’m so amazed and can hardly believe…

All that you did and all that you gave
Where do I begin? What do I say?
You are more to me than what you can see.
You are strength, love and sincerity.


There was only one person who could end a nightmare.
One person who knew no monsters were there.
Pennies on train tracks and making a wish,
Horses and sailing and hours of “Go Fish”.


“Rise and shine, Miss America”… do you remember?
Each morning you’d say this… it seems like forever.
Walking home from school, I got lost my first day
There you were around the corner and I saw your face.


You taught me to fly when I didn’t have wings.
I traveled to places I might never have seen.
If you hadn’t given me the courage to venture beyond,
Always knowing you’d catch me if something went wrong.


I wish…


You knew how much you’ve really given
And how much you’ve made me believe in
Pennies on train tracks and making a wish,
As I hold up my daughter and pass down your kiss”.









~~

Deletion Completion

Well, I have deleted my Letter to Dr. Moon per a family member's request.  That person is the only reason why I would do that.  It feels dishonest to delete it and I am sick over doing it. 

Sometimes the hardest thing to write is the "Title" of a blog...

Mom got out of the hospital late Saturday.  She had been in there for a couple of days; taken there because of severe shortness of breath.  She had also been experiencing edema and extreme tiredness.  Mom recently had a pain medication implant put in, so the thought was maybe the shortness of breath was a side effect from that.  But they found fluid in her lung and needed to drain it.  They also found multiple nodules within the left lung.  Of course, the hope is the nodules don't do anything... just stay where they are.  She will also now be using oxygen 24/7.  I know she doesn't want to have to deal with that but it will help her.  Right now, she needs to recover from all of this.  And she will.  She would get right back out there even she had an anvil tied to her ankle... she'd drag it to work and throw it over her shoulder at meetings.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is m'mom.

and the UPDATE is...

Mom got the results of her first CT scan since returning home from Korea... and I have to say "we may never really know" if the treatments in Korea worked or not.  The CT didn't really show anything getting really worse.  The radiologist thought the top lobe of her lung looked a little better, but the bottom lobe looked a little worse. There is so much opacity showing in the CT in that lung and it can be collapsed lung, scar tissue from all the radiation she's had, or disease. No one can really tell. The distinctive tumors she had in the upper lobe can't be seen anymore because the entire area is so full of opacity now. They looked at the CT side-by-side to the one taken last August (before the last round of radiation here or in Korea) and it was really hard to see any difference. Mom says that there is a lot to be grateful for in that it hasn't gotten worse over the last 8 months, and that's huge. It didn't get any better either (at least that we can tell) and that's certainly disappointing.

Mom and her pal asked the doc if he thought the treatments in Korea helped at all. He said yes, because she was still sitting there and still working full time. He said most patients with her kind of cancer only make it a few months to a year. He also said he thought going was good for her psychologically and emotionally. He didn't think that she would do well just sitting around doing nothing. She asked what would he suggest next. He said there were a few drugs out there, but that she'd already done the big ones. There isn't a lot of treatments for people this long into the disease because there aren't that many of them, although the number is growing. He suggested naturalpathic treatments, and thought she'd do well trying the naturalpathic school in Portland.

So there you go. 

I basically told her this...

I just read about James Blue. I feel bad for his wife. You and he were so different though. He went to Korea in a wheelchair and hooked up to oxygen. And with or without all that treatment in Korea, your cancer hasn't spread. That definitely could have happened without going but it's possible it helped too. I guess there will be no real way to know for sure. So for your own peace of mind, you might go with the thought that maybe it did. Because if it just ended up being a very expensive vacation for you, it sure wasn't very fun. :-)



I think that you are going to be a testament to this fight with stage IV lung cancer. You are an example of someone who CAN keep fighting and working and living.

Whatever you are doing, Mom... keep doing it. You may not be 100% and maybe still right where you were 8 months ago... but to be where you were 8 months ago is pretty darn remarkable. Don't you think?


Yep, and that is that.  Mom is coming up on three years after diagnosis of Stage IV lung cancer.  Still working 40 hours per week and still just as strong and wilfull as ever.  I remember Dr. Cho in Korea having a hard time too reading the CT scan because of all the opacity.

To me, this has been like walking into a really dark area where you have to feel your way around to find the way back out.  This new scan is still like walking into a really dark area, feeling your way around and still finding the same way back out.  After the treatment, it would have been nice to know that the area was filled with light.  However, I think we have to realize that the way out could have been lost forever.   Well, it's not.  It's still dark but there is a lot of hope that we can live with that and get used to feeling our way around and always find the door out. 

I love you, Mom.

Direct from Mom

Here is a verbatim quote from mom:


"Well this has been quite a week for me. Monday Emergency room and learning that the new hurt is a broken rib, then into work; Tuesday the Pain Clinic for a nerve block to try and slow down the rib pain then into work; Wednesday work all day; Thursday chemo from 8:00 to 4:30. A long day... My onc is trying to follow what I told him about the chemo I received in Korea (as well as the kind and dosage as provided by Dr. Moon). Boy the hydration sure had me running to the restroom a lot and I think they may have given me more benedryl than perhaps I needed because I nodded off and on for hours. They also gave me a couple of different anti-nausea pills and IV pushes. Today I don't feel so hot, still taking anti-nausea stuff and Tylenol for the headache I woke up with this morning and at work by 7:00".


The good news from this is that the nerve block she got last Tuesday is working and she's feeling much better now.  A broken rib (ouch!).  Also, the good news is that the Tykerb will be here in a couple of weeks.

One of the patients, Dawn, wrote on her CaringBridge, that her new scans show no evidence of cancer.  I asked mom what she thought about this and she said: 

"I did read Dawn's CaringBridge and I do believe it's possible. In other areas of discussion on the internet, I've seen it referred to at NED ( No Evidence of Disease). The trick now is to somehow kill all the little cancer cells floating in her bloodstream that are looking for a home".


I hope that she will continue to update even after she gets home.  She's a nice lady.

So, that's it for now.  Mom should have her scan end of this month/early April.  Will let you know more as it happens.