Note: This post contains a discussion of cancer, illness, and the passing of a parent.
I briefly touched on my Dad's sudden passing when I wrote DJ's birth story, but I never in a million years thought I'd be updating three years later to share that my beloved Mom also passed away. This is the story of how everything happened. It's long, but believe it or not, I actually left things out for brevity.
In fall 2023, Mom started to lose feeling in her left hand. It started with a tingling that was like it was falling asleep. Soon, it was entirely numb and pain had started all up her arm. Thinking it was due to a pinched nerve, doctors sent her to occupational therapy and physical therapy. Things only progressed.
By Christmas last year, my brother, sister-in-law, and I were all encouraging Mom to demand more tests, something to help pinpoint why the numbness and pain were only worsening. At this point, she couldn't even open bottles or doors. She couldn't use her left hand at all. In January, her doctor referred her to another specialist, but the first opening wasn't for months.
Once February rolled around, we knew something was very wrong. She called and got on waiting lists with specialists, hoping there would be a cancellation. By February 16, her right side was starting to go numb, too. That's the point when I realized that we were likely dealing with a tumor or possibly MS. She called the specialist again and they still didn't have any openings. When she asked what she should do about the pain in the meantime, they told her to go to the ER. She told me if she wasn't feeling better by Monday, she'd go.
Monday came and she went to the ER. I ended work early and drove to Franklin to meet her there. By the time I got there, I waited only a few minutes before a nurse came out to get me. When I got to Mom's room in the ER, she told me they'd found a tumor on her spine. She'd only just gotten the news so I waited with her for the doctor to come in.
When he did, he told us that he was fairly confident it was cancer and they wanted to do more scans. According to him, tumors on the spine don't typically originate there, so they wanted to see if they could find the source. One chest X-ray later, they found a mass on her left lung. My mom, a lifelong smoker, had lung cancer.
From there, it was a bit of a whirlwind. They kept her in the hospital while they looked for somewhere to transfer her. Their hope was that the tumor could be removed. It took days to find somewhere with an open bed and a willingness to even see her, but we made the trek to Winston-Salem to Wake Forest Hospital.
There, they confirmed the cancer diagnosis and delivered the news that the tumor was inoperable. Mom's only option was radiation to reduce its size and hopefully bring her some relief from the numbness and pain while starting chemo to treat the rest of the cancer. They sent a lung biopsy to find out exactly what type of cancer (which would inform her treatment) and we waited.
Initially, Mom didn't want to pursue treatment. By this point, I had read enough to realize, based on the spread, that we were talking about Stage IV lung cancer. I told her it was her choice. Ultimately, she decided to try radiation and chemo. Her biopsy results came back as non-small cell lung cancer.
After her initial radiation treatment (something like 10 rounds over two weeks, if I remember correctly), she regained the ability to use her right hand and started to regain some movement and feeling in her left. This gave us a bit of hope. We knew a cure wasn't possible, but we hoped this meant the treatments would give us more time with her. A PET scan showed that the cancer was also in her liver and lymph nodes.
She started chemotherapy, but it was hard. Her birthday was on March 16 and I cooked corned beef and cabbage for her on St. Patrick's Day because she'd never had it. By April, she was struggling to take care of herself. Each weekend I drove to pick up groceries and other supplies she needed then went to her house to cook, clean, do laundry, and help with whatever other items she had on her list that my brother and aunt hadn't been able to do earlier in the week. She worked hard to hide how she was feeling, but I could tell. I could also see it in the continued deterioration of her handwriting, of all things.
By this point, she'd also started swelling. She was hospitalized with pneumonia and sent to Haywood Regional Hospital on May 8. There, she got more medications (she was already equipped with a veritable pharmacy) and was sent home after just a day or two. They also put her on oxygen. After she was discharged, I stayed with her while her oxygen was delivered and set up. Kevin, DJ, and I visited the day before Mother's Day (May 11) where I cooked a pork chops recipe she'd wanted to try. She spent the next day (May 12) with my brother and his family. I knew it was our last Mother's Day weekend with her.
On Monday, May 13, Mom met with the cancer doctor who shared that he thought the chemo was doing more harm than good. Mom agreed and stopped treatment. On the phone that night, we talked about how the next step was hospice. I planned to go to her house on Wednesday to figure out what we needed to do to get her set up to live with us.
When DJ and I got to her house on Wednesday, May 15, my brother and two aunts were already there. My brother told me that Mom's oxygen level was really low and she wasn't making much sense when she talked. Her oxygen was below 79 (despite being on oxygen) and I called an ambulance. Once they took her to the hospital in Franklin, I took DJ home and headed back to the hospital. The doctor who initially saw her wanted to transfer her to Mission Hospital in Asheville because she had pneumonia again (or still, it wasn't clear). Her potassium was also very low, so they started an infusion. Between breathing treatments, a higher oxygen flow, and the potassium infusion, she started to think more clearly. Then, the best possible thing that could have happened in that moment, did: Dr. Franks arrived.
Mom had spent years working as a receptionist for Dr. Franks in private practice but he's now the hospitalist at Angel Hospital. When he came into the room, it felt like the first time someone had been just "on the level" with her. He asked her what she wanted, asked if she wanted treatment, and was very honest and straightforward with what was happening. He said we shouldn't send her to Asheville because if they were going to treat the pneumonia, they would also want to treat the cancer. He suggested we keep her in Franklin and treat only the pneumonia, then discharge her to live with me in hospice care.
She stayed in the hospital until May 20. During her stay at the hospital, she declined in many ways. By the time we got her to my house, she was barely able to stand on her own. Thankfully, hospice had already delivered a hospital bed and other supplies to make her more comfortable.
Just a week later, on May 27, her pain became much more pronounced. She lost interest in eating and started sleeping much more. I was with her nearly 24/7 from then until she passed away on June 3, 2024, less than four months after her diagnosis.
Caring for her during the time she was living with us was the most difficult, and most meaningful, experience of my life. Though she declined rapidly, she rallied nearly every night to tell DJ goodnight before he went to bed, even many days after she'd stopped eating and drinking.
Lung cancer, like all cancer, is a terrible disease. While I'm glad she didn't suffer for as long as some people, I admittedly carry a lot of anger at her medical team for not asking more questions (or doing any imaging). Her primary care doctor prescribed her an inhaler for shortness of breath more than a year before she ever started losing feeling in her hand. Why there wasn't a chest X-ray ordered for a lifetime smoker with shortness of breath is beyond me. Earlier detection could have led to a different outcome, or at least given us more time with her.
For her part, Mom told me before she died that it wasn't worth holding onto that anger and that I needed to forgive everyone and move on. She was such a good person. I aspire to be even half as great as she was. I hope to someday be rid of the anger I feel, and I work on it every day, but for now, I just miss my Mom terribly. And DJ misses his Mamaw. He talks about her nearly every day still, asking to see videos we filmed at her house and that she makes an appearance in.
It feels so unfair to him that he never got to meet his Papaw and got less than 3 years with his Mamaw. They were both such amazing people.
I could rant for hours about how our healthcare system is reactive rather than proactive, how rural hospitals and medical centers have been gutted, and how the insurance industry is to blame for many of our problems, but I'll save that for another time. For now, I'll leave you with this:
If something feels off, advocate for yourself. It isn't always easy, but you can also bring an advocate with you to a doctor's appointment, whether that's a friend, family member, or someone whose job it is to advocate for patients. Beyond that, make the most of the time you have with your loved ones. It sounds cliche, but you will never understand just how precious every single day is until they're gone.
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