On Friday very early in the morning Spencer and I took Sean and his family to the airport. I was having a rough time myself that morning as I had developed a blocked milk duct and was in pretty bad pain. Unfortunately both of my girls have been extraordinarily difficult to breastfeed and both had latching issues leaving me to have to pump every 3-4 hours around the clock. My routine was every 3-4 hours try to breastfeed Lydia, then give her a bottle, then pump for the next feeding. I had been doing this for 6 weeks and it was tiring. Mom had a radiation simulation scheduled that day to mark her body properly for the radiation treatments. I had wanted to take her to that appointment but she insisted she go alone. She insisted she drive. Her exact response to me offering to take her was "No, no Carly offered but no, I will be just fine. It's called a simulation..duh...sure hope NO ONE SHOWS UP CAUSE I WOULD REALLY HATE MY STUBBORN MODE AND NOT SHOW UP OR WALK OUT! I am fine, thanks." Well...that's just lovely Mom. So against my better judgment I did not go and she drove herself. She was fine but I do believe that was the last time she drove although I could be wrong. Thankfully, stopping driving was a decision she made on her own.
I came that Saturday to spend the weekend with Mom. Aunt Pat was returning on Sunday and Mom was set for her next round of chemo on July 15. I brought Lydia with me. It was obvious Mom was getting weaker. The side effects from the chemo were in full force. Her mouth had become full of sores and she was hardly able to eat anything. I will say this was the one side effect of chemo that was the worst for my Mom, the pain in her mouth was terrible and she was simply not able to eat. With the sores, her voice changed as I imagine the sores extended down her throat. This was a hard change for me, I missed the sound of my Mom's voice. Her voice had now become quiet and haggard. She had also swollen up quite a bit, in her face and in her legs from the steroids. She was losing weight, but appeared so bloated. I snapped a picture of her and Lydia and then looking at the pictures and made a comparison of just one month prior.
The change was remarkable.
That Saturday I went to Verizon to get her a new phone. Hers was falling apart because whenever she was upset lately she would throw it. They had an upgraded version of her phone so I went to go get that. The sales representative kept trying to convince me she needed a smart phone. Finally I said, "She has cancer, she's sick, she needs a phone she already knows how to use. And she needs a case because she likes to throw her phone." He understood and helped me, he even said her previous phone was under warranty so she could just get a new one no charge. Great.
Afterwards I went to Redbox to get us a movie to watch. I decided on August: Osage County. It had Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts in it, it had to be good right? It was a bad choice. It's a very dark, depressing movie, but there were bits and pieces of the movie that resonated with me. The main character who Meryl Streep plays has oral cancer. She is cruel. Her husband leaves and both of her daughters end up leaving her so she is only left with a hired caregiver. The line that struck me from the movie was, "Thank God we can't tell the future, we'd never get out of bed." That was exactly how I felt about the last five years of my life. Caitlyn's death, divorce, cancer. It was indeed hard to get out of bed many mornings. My Mom slept off and on throughout the movie thankfully. Sometime that night I finally told her Dad had prostate cancer. Her response that I mentioned in a previous entry was "Well, I wish them well."
The next day Sunday July 13, 2014 Aunt Pat was to return. Aunt Pat liked to leave early on Sundays because the traffic wasn't as bad. Mom didn't seem excited as she was the last time to have Aunt Pat return. She was sicker now, she was weak, she actually needed someone to be there. She needed more than a friend, she needed a caregiver and that was very hard for my Mom. Aunt Pat left eastern Ohio at 5 AM and made it to Mom's apartment a little after 10 AM. When Aunt Pat called me to tell me she was almost there, I told Mom and Mom seemed flat, almost annoyed. When Aunt Pat came in Mom barely responded to her. It was not the joyous greeting it had been a month prior. This cancer was making things really hard, Mom was in the middle of the battle and felt like she was losing. I felt embarrassed at my Mom's response to Aunt Pat. Aunt Pat had just driven 5 hours to be with her for chemo and to help her and this was the thankfulness my Mom showed? My Mom was clearly irritated. A little while passed and Aunt Pat and I were sitting in her living room talking, Mom came to sit down and Aunt Pat reached for her heavy purse to move it off Mom's rocker. Mom burst into tears and screamed at us in her haggard voice, "Stop treating me like an invalid! I just want to die!" We were shocked, we were just trying to help. We sat there silently for a long time as Mom cried and I cried, and Aunt Pat looked away. This was hard, this was really really hard and it wasn't going to get easier. This is what Dr. Mares meant when he told me two months prior, "Your Mom has a hard road ahead of her."
Things improved a little after that, Mom was being nice to me but still cold to Aunt Pat. We decided I would go with Mom to her chemo on Tuesday because she had an appointment with her oncologist prior and I really wanted to hear the results of the PET scan. Aunt Pat would watch Lydia. I felt badly Aunt Pat had driven all this way and I was going to use her as a baby-sitter on that Tuesday, but I really wanted to go to that appointment.
As I was leaving that evening, Aunt Pat was sitting out on Mom's patio. I could tell she was very hurt. Mom was being so harsh with her. Mom was acting similarly to Meryl Streep in the movie we had just watched the night before, I hate to say it, but cruel at times. I tried to apologize as I'd done a few weeks before. Instead of telling me that everything was okay like last time Aunt Pat just responded, "Yeah." This was hard, I felt terrible. I wanted to tell Aunt Pat that she didn't deserve this, that she should just go back home, but I needed her help desperately.
However, as cold as Mom was acting to Aunt Pat, I knew she felt better having her there.
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