2 Steps Forward…1 Step Back

My mom is resting across the room from me as I complete some editing and morph into blogging.  It is the eve of my mom’s 2 week milestone of being mostly flat on her back as she receives her 10 day radiation course and wrestles with the idea of cancer ravaging her 71 year young body. As her eldest daughter and middle child, I expected a longer life for my mom and a battle with lung cancer, emphysema or quite honestly & worse…both.

The other day, while we were here alone, she told me about a poem that she had written about her parents as they were aging and how difficult it was to witness them growing older & frail and how hard that was on her. She began to weep. I asked her if she still had that poem and she said “yes” and I asked if it was in her home in a dresser or somewhere that I could perhaps easily locate it and she said “yes”.

I went on to say….” I don’t get that opportunity. I don’t get to watch you “grow old”, my poem will be quite different.” She agreed.  No one asked for this. No one does. Why now? Why my mom? What is God trying to teach me? What am I to learn? I feel much wisdom and strength coming my way. It’s a pretty crappy pay off, if you ask me, to gain wisdom from your parent’s death, pretty crappy, indeed.

On to the title of this blog and it’s significance. Yesterday my mom experienced a “set back”, if you will.  She now has a new pathological fracture. The fracture is in her left humerus. We all knew this was probable. In all the moving around and transferring and re-positioning it was just a matter of time. So, as she was starting to actually feel much better from all the radiation and requiring WAY less medication, we now get to nurse another broken bone and get back on some “break through” pain meds.  :\  Now while this was possibly avoidable (no fault here!) this did buy her another day of receiving radiation while in the hospital which is a blessing. So we will remain here through her radiation treatment this Friday and then move to bigger and better things! God is good!

We had a nice quite day today. No visitors. My youngest brother, Mike, slept over last night. Anne hit the midday shift and I joined her in the room in time to take mom down for her 12:40 radiation appointment and spent the rest of the day with her here. Tim, my oldest brother, will take the final night shift tomorrow as we need to move forward. Several choices  to consider and while nothing is concrete at this time I’ll post again when I know more about a move to a more permanent location.

I can’t even begin to express the joy I get from being here with my mom. These are special days. Please keep her in your prayers as you go about your days and know that we are strong and steadfast in our resolve to provide my mom every bit of care and relief that we can. Your prayers are felt and embraced. Please feel free to comment as I am always reading them to my mom!