As you all know, I live in Alaska. My mom lives in Maryland, entirely across the country. It is a long flight so we didn't see each other often, but about once a year or so, either I would fly out to visit her (making sure to bring each of my kids once), or she would fly up to visit me. On one memorable occasion (her 60th birthday, so in 2013), we met at Pensacola Beach for a week:
and even took a little side trip to New Orleans:
That was a really fun trip, tropical storm Karen notwithstanding. But mostly, I would fly to Maryland and we would go to Ocean City and/or DC for a few days, or she would fly to Alaska and I would show her all the touristy things.
In the summer of 2018, we decided to split the travel, and both fly to San Francisco:
We went to see the redwoods while we were there, which were AMAZING:
It so happened that the weather was pretty windy and chilly that week in San Fran, so we decided to hop in the rental car and drive down the coast, through Big Sur:
until we found a warm, sunny beach. We were successful:
But I was a little worried about my mom that trip. She had a terrible cough, especially at night, and she did not have a lot of energy. I didn't realize until we were driving back to San Francisco how tired she was getting, and I felt bad for dragging her around too much. But other than the cough and tiredness, she didn't seem really ill, although I could tell something wasn't right. I encouraged her to go to a doctor when she got home, but she insisted that she had probably just inhaled some dust from some remodeling she had recently had done.
By fall, the cough had worsened, and she kept telling me she was spending a lot of time resting, in bed. She finally agreed to go to a doctor, but was absolutely furious when they wanted to do a PET scan to check for cancer. She was adamant that they only suspected cancer because she was a heavy smoker, and that they should rule out the easily treatable things before considering cancer. She finally agreed to the PET scan, however, and in October, she found out she had small cell lung cancer.
Small cell lung cancer is almost exclusively found in heavy smokers, and is the most aggressive form of lung cancer. Most statistics I found said that less than something like 6% of people with SCLC survive 2 years post diagnosis.
She started chemotherapy the beginning of November, and I flew down to be with her for her first dose, since we didn't know how bad the side effects would be. It turned out to not be too bad, thankfully. She was supposed to get 4 doses, 3 weeks apart. She wasn't able to receive her last dose, however, because she wound up in the hospital with an infection that almost killed her. I flew down and stayed with her for two and a half weeks while she was in the hospital, and got her safely home, then flew back to Alaska.
Thus began a series of treatments that slowed the cancer down for a time but never stopped or eradicated it, and a series of life threatening complications, from both the cancer itself, and the treatments. Throughout this process, mom got progressively weaker and sicker, but stayed as stubborn as ever, and absolutely refused to consider that she would not beat the cancer. I think her sheer force of will kept her alive for a long time.
In mid December, after her last hospital admission, she finally came to the realization that she was not going to get better, and that there was nothing more that could be done to stop the cancer. She signed up for hospice care, and asked James and I to come down to see her, which we of course agreed to. We agreed that I would come down in early January, and up to two days before I got to her house, she was still talking and sounding like her normal self, still on Facebook, etc. The only difference I noticed is that she seemed to be spending more time in bed. But by the time I was boarding my plane, I was starting to worry, because she had pretty much stopped responding to messages, and when I talked to her the day before I got there, she said she wasn't feeling well and was going to bed.
We got there on Tuesday, January 7, and she passed only 9 days later, on January 16. I was shocked when I got to her house. and saw her condition. I was only supposed to be there for a week, but I decided that I just could not leave her. James had to get back to Alaska, but I stayed, and I am so glad that I did. I got up the morning of the 16th to take her her medications, and found that she had passed in the short 3 hours between doses, while I was sleeping, but at least she was not in the house alone.
I've described my mom's illness in a few short paragraphs, but there are no words to explain a year and a half of fear, pain and anguish. At the end, she was tired of fighting, tired of being sick, hated above all else being helpless, and just wanted to go, so in some ways her passing was a relief. But she is my mom, and while I am so, so glad that she is no longer anguished, I am also so, so sad that she is gone.
I'll always love you, mom.
