November 1, 2012
My last few blogs have been boring and short, sweet and to the point. This is because I didn't get them posted when the runs occurred and I had forgotten details. I'm sort of chronologically OCD and couldn't skip them so I just posted the basics and what I could remember of each run so I could have them sort of to follow myself chronologically. There are a couple that I don't even remember the date so they weren't dated (which, incidentally bugs the crap out of me but there's nothing I can do about it so I just have to live with it). Anyway, the reason I haven't been posting and I've not even been running or training or even thinking about running and/or training is because in the past month my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Breast cancer has always been a cause that I have always felt particularly strong about but a few years ago my Aunt Bonnie, my mother's younger sister, was diagnosed and it became a much more important cause to me. In June, I ran my first 5k and it was the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in St. Louis, MO. I have never seen so many people affected by one thing in my whole life as I saw that day. So many women had someone's name on their back.....many had more than one. One family had three women's names on their back all "In Memory Of;" all three women listed had lost their lives to breast cancer. I was so grateful that sign on my back said "In Celebration Of Aunt Bonnie" instead of "In Memory Of" and my heart went out to all those who weren't fortunate enough to have "In Celebration Of."
Even now as I write I am overwhelmed with the emotion of the race and the women who were there but most of all the women in the Survivors Procession which was one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced. Thousands of women waving their arms in victory and if there was one person there who wasn't moved I would be surprised. But most of all I am overwhelmed with emotion over the past month because all of sudden it was MY mother and it was MY family that has been affected by this disease. Now it is us who is going to the doctor and looking on the internet for answers to questions that we didn't even know how to ask.....the first being "Is my mother going to die?" I am 42 years old; my mother is 72 and I have accepted that as I get older my mother's life expectancy gets shorter. I have accepted that one day my mother will indeed die. We even joke about. We walk through her house and she asks me about what I want from her collections of pretty things and her china and her teapots and such so she can let her husband know what is to be mine and what goes to my sister when she dies. We tease about what she doesn't want at her funeral but at the same time these discussions hold a note of seriousness. These are things that need to be discussed and decided so no one has to make decisions when the time comes. No one wants to make those kinds of decisions when they are overwrought with grief. I have these discussions myself with my husband ("If something happens to me, I want you to make sure that _________________"). But for the first time in my life this reality has become a real reality. It was so close that if I could reach out and touch it I could have touched it; if you understand what I mean. I don't like the way that feels. I can accept the fact that my mother is going to die but until it happens I don't want to think about it and all of sudden I had to think about it. It was terrifying and unsettling. My life seemed to stop in my head for a whole two weeks while we were waiting to find out if she indeed had breast cancer and after we found out while we waited to see the doctor about options.
I went to the doctor with my mother and her husband. I knew the doctor we were going to see. I had seen her when I had problems with my first mammogram. She is very kind and reassuring. And she knows what she is talking about (as I hope she would since she is the expert on boobies here!) One of the first things she told us was that my mother is NOT going to die of this breast cancer. I had been putting on a brave front and told my children, my husband and my sister as well as anyone else who knew that I was not going to worry until the doctor told me too and while this was true to an extent, it is hard to follow up with it by actually believing it fully myself. So when the doctor told us this I was much more relaxed. My mother's cancer had been caught soon enough and it is very responsive to treatment. As I type this, my mother is currently at home....well, I can't say that for sure. She might be out running errands because when I talked to her this morning she was curling her hair and I'm not sure if she does that if she is just going to hang around the house or if she does it every day regardless of her daily plans. She does like to be a well put together woman so I wouldn't be surprised if she was doing it just because it's what she does....but I digress, my mother is doing fine right now. She had a lumpectomy on Tuesday along with a little bit of reconstructive surgery. They took the infected tissue out as well as some lymph nodes for testing. They want to be sure her lymph nodes do not have cancer. If they do, then her treatment plan will have to be revised. We do not expect the lymph nodes to be cancerous. This is the power of positive thinking but also due to the fact that the cancer was caught so soon. Because of the tissue that was removed, things needed to be adjusted a little so my mother's chest wouldn't look funny, thus the reconstructive surgery; it just involved moving a little tissue around. When my mother has healed from the surgery, she will begin radiation treatment five days a week for I think six weeks. After that she will take an oral hormone for five years and as long as the cancer doesn't come back (my aunt's has not come back and it's been four or five years) Mom will be fine. Prognosis is excellent and we are on the right track but this bump in the road has me thinking a lot about life and many things.
I put my life on hold and I got stalled for a very long time. Now that treatment has begun it is much easier for me to get back to my life and the way things were. This is why I haven't been running despite my running friends telling me that I needed to get out there and get to it since running is exercise and exercise is stress relief and I love running so much. I must remember to take care of myself and my children despite the stresses of life, even if one of those stresses is the potential death of my own mother. I was blessed this time. My mother will continue her life and I am happy for that. But there is going to be a time when I won't be so blessed. My mother will die and so will my father. It's a part of life and I thought I was prepared for it, but I'm not. I guess I need to work on being more like my husband. He believes that we need to enjoy people while they are here and in our lives because one day those people are not going to be in our lives whether it be through distance or death or whatever. He believes that we shouldn't be sad when we lose those we love; we should appreciate the time we had with them. I need to learn to be more like that in some ways.
KEA
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