It's Not Just In Her Lungs

Before starting with this post I want to clarify my Mother's Day post. Something has been bothering me as I've been rereading it. I want people to know we didn't just decide to do chemo to simply extend her life. Yes, I wanted her to meet Lydia but I think having her undergo chemo simply to give us a few more months with her would've be selfish. Or maybe not, but that decision would've been up to her if that was the case. Her tumor was very large, the size of a baseball. I do not even want to imagine the kind of pain and suffering my Mom would've have had to go through if we just continued to let it grow...and it was growing quickly. I think the tumor would've suffocated her. She would've had a horrible death. The chemo didn't save her life, but it gave her a better death.

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The weekend after Mother's Day I invited her to come to stay with us in Noblesville. From this point on, I was never going to let my Mom spend another weekend alone in her apartment. It was bad enough I had to be an hour away from her during the week to work. Any free time I had was going to be spent with my Mom now. She was hesitant about coming as she had just been here the weekend before, she didn't want to intrude. I told her either I'm coming there or she's coming here. She decided to come stay with us. I also insisted on picking her up. That Friday it was raining. As I was getting ready to turn on the interstate, I saw this:

I don't know what meaning to assign to it. I know it's a meteorological phenomenon, but it made me feel like God was saying, "I'm here." 

That Saturday I sorted clothes in preparation for Lydia's birth. She was due July 1, c-section planned for June 24. Carly and Ryan had given me the last of my niece Caitlyn's clothing. This meant so much to me. I missed my niece so much. I went through the clothing and we reminisced about certain outfits she wore and how she looked so cute. I remember finding this pink vest I had bought for her:

We were saddened at clothes that were sizes past 12 months. We knew she was never able to wear those clothes. She had died at 11 months. 

I was having trouble because some of the clothes I knew weren't going to work for Lydia. They weren't going to be the right size for the season. I felt like I should keep them all. How could I ever give away anything that had been Caitlyn's? She was gone but we still had her clothes. My Mom assured me it would be ok to donate them. Another child could wear them. We had our memories of her. We didn't have to save everything. They were just clothes. We still had her spirit.

As I was sorting the clothes my Mom sat on the couch with Amelia. Amelia was playing games on my iPhone and my Mom was enjoying the rare opportunity that Amelia was cuddly and sitting still.

Amelia eventually got up and my Mom shifted position. She winced in pain. I asked her what was wrong. She said her left hip was starting to hurt. She asked me why her hip was hurting. I knew immediately there was cancer there. It wasn't just in her lungs, it had spread to her bones. She had had her PET scan on Thursday to check if the cancer had spread to other organs. The results weren't back yet, but I didn't need them. I had expected this, that it wasn't just in her lungs. The cancer was so extensive in her lungs I knew it must've spread beyond that. I didn't want her to have cancer in her bones though. Bone cancer was painful. 

I advised her to take some Norco she had left from back pain the previous winter and she did. She only intermittently complained of pain the rest of the weekend, but I talked to my Aunt Pat later. She told me my Mom had told her she was in such excruciating pain it took everything in her to climb our stairs. The pain had come barreling in without warning, just like everything else.