My missing piece

This will be one of the hardest things I ever post about or talk about for the rest of my life.

I lost a piece of my heart a month and a half ago, my mom lost her fight with Cancer. This was the 2nd fight my mom faced with Lung Cancer, and we all had high hopes. She was such a fighter and had the drive to live for her kids and her grandchildren. She told me so many times that she was going to keep fighting because she had so much to live for. My mom has always been the strongest woman I have ever known. I seen her face so many battles and bumps in the road, and she would just pick up and keep going. She had a rough childhood, her father disappeared when she was four. Her mother put all of her siblings up for adoption and she was placed in foster care. She ended up living back with her mother when she was a teenager which was a very estranged relationship to say the least. She had 4 children, her first was my brother who passed away not long after he was born. I am the youngest, my mom graduated college right before she had me. My younger years I remember my mom working all the time. At times she would work two jobs to support us kids as a single mom. She was strong and did what she had to for us.

In Oct. of 2017 my mom started having a lot of chest pain and problems breathing, she went to the hospital 5 times and they kept saying it was pneumonia. Finally, the last time they did more test and the Cancer had returned. This time in the good lung, the first fight with Cancer they removed a 3rd of her left lung. She was admitted in the hospital and the tests started. A week after being admitted one of the tests found Cancer in her 2nd vertebrae, right arm and her sternum, and both kidneys it had spread fast. It was inoperable, so we started radiation. The hospital could not keep her pain levels down, she was in so much pain she wanted to give up. I never in my life heard my mom cry out like she was, we wanted her in a better hospital. The hospital she was in refused to approve a transfer request, but instead released her 4 days after we spoke with them for outpatient radiation.

Me and my sister went and got our mom and brought her to my house a state over, got her all set up with better doctors and started on radiation here. It was a rough start with an ambulance call within the first 24 hours of being home, but the doctors finally got her pain under control. My mom was talking and eating again (she had lost 45 pounds in the month and a half she was in the other hospital). The pain was still there, but it was manageable now. Going to skip through all the doctors appointments cause there was a lot of them. We finished 15 rounds of radiation on her 2 vertebrae and c-spine, it was time for the pet scan to see if it helped. Right after leaving the hospital the phone rang, it was the doctor telling us to come right back they had to do x-rays. The Cancer had spread to my moms right leg and they feared her leg would break or already had a fracture. There was no fracture but the bone was completely consumed from her hip all the way to her knee. The day after we started radiation on her right leg, set up for 20 rounds this time, it was bad. Through the week her walking with my help was getting unbearable for her, the pain was too much. I got her a wheelchair and she only had to stand to help me transfer her back and forth. Friday came and that was 5 rounds down, but she wasn't right something was wrong. She was sleeping all the time, I thought she was just worn out from all the radiation. When she was awake, she would mumble her words and she was having conversations with someone I couldn't see. She had started refusing her pain meds as well, and wasn't complaining of any pain. I was getting really scared, I had no idea what to do. Saturday night she told me she had to use the restroom, we transferred her to the wheelchair went to the restroom and came back to her seat. Maybe 15 minutes later she told me she needed the restroom again, so we got in there and was in the middle of transferring from the wheelchair to the potty and I heard the loudest snap I have ever heard. My mom screamed "Oh my God, My leg just broke!" I screamed help me please to my husband my 9 year old was standing right there. My husband came and took her out of my arms and set her in the wheelchair, I am crying and screaming looking at my mom set there no tears, not saying anything just had her hand resting on her broken leg. I called 911, a cop and the EMS showed up. They asked questions which my mom calmly answered like she was just fine. We went to the hospital, full body x-rays done. The results where back... the leg was completely broke in half, the bone was too weak to fix it. They didn't even stabilize the bone they just left if like it was. But in addition to the leg the 2nd vertebrae the Cancer ate completely through it, her neck was broke. They said they could not give her the medical attention she needed at that hospital so she needed to be transferred so she could see a neurosurgeon.

My older sister met the ambulance at the other hospital which was almost 2 hours from me. She seen the doctor, there was nothing they could do they said my mom had 5 to 7 days left, her kidneys were almost completely shut down. They wanted to put her in hospice care for pain management until she passed. She was transferred to Hospice when I made it there she was already out from the meds. My mom didn't wake up or talk to any of us the last 6 days of her life, it was the hardest thing I have even dealt with. My husband and I went home with the kids after celebrating our youngest son's 1st birthday with my mom and family. The next morning while getting ready to head back up to see mom, my sister called and my mom was gone. They were going to wait until I got there so I could say goodbye to her. Pulling into that parking lot and the dread that washed over me I could hardly get my legs to work to walk across the parking lot. My sister was waiting for me at the door. She walked me to my moms room opened the door and my legs gave out. My mom was laying there not breathing anymore, she was gone, part of my heart was gone. I held her hand, i kissed her cheek, I hugged her and cried and told her i loved her so much. I know she wasn't there anymore but it didn't matter at that point, I wasn't ready to let her go. I didn't want to be without my mom, she was my best friend and a piece of my heart.

Seeing my mom the way she was through this fight with Cancer was extremely hard. I pretty much cut everyone out after I lost her. I stopped talking to my husband and my sister, I didn't know how to deal with it. My mom was the person I went to when I was having a hard time, I didn't have that anymore. I am still trying to deal with it the best I can, without shutting others out. This tragic event in my life is what lead me to started a Blog and share my feelings. It let me get stuff out that I didn't know how to express to my husband or family. And allowed to me to talk about losing my mom, which seemed harder to speak about than it was to write about. It still hurts everyday and it will for the rest of my life, but writing gave me a little bit of peace in my soul.