As Holy Week’s go, this has been one of the most difficult I can remember.
After weeks of feeling tired, losing weight and just generally being unable to leave her apartment, I found my mother on her bed, unable to get up to eat or even go to the bathroom. After transferring her to the hospital and getting her admitted through the ER, the doctors discovered that her brain tumor is back, but it is very small this time and not causing her any problems. Her multiple myeloma is likewise under control. So the question of what was causing her to feel so awful still remained. After some more tests and scans they determined that her ureters were being blocked by a large abdominal mass, probably ovarian.
There really was a reason for her to feel as badly as she did.
I think my mom even forgot that she had an ovary. She had a hysterectomy for fibroids back in the 60s when they removed one ovary along with her uterus. That part of her life had been over for a long time. Apparently the one ovary had been left to provide natural hormones so that she would not have to suffer an early menopausal. I remember mom going through menopause about the time I was going through adolescence – we were a household of raging hormones. But I think that’s about the last time anyone including mom ever considered her solitary retired ovary.
The surgeon came in last Thursday. He told my mother he was pretty sure she had ovarian cancer, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he got in there. He told my sister and me that when he first got a look at the tumor he had doubts about even attempting to remove it. That little ovary had determined that it was not to be ignored and had made a huge mass (and mess ) of itself. With bowel wrapping around it and nicely embedded into omentum and other structures, the surgeon found the task of removing it a bit daunting. The way the surgeon described removing this thing reminded me a little of the way Mr. Pete addresses a mechanical or repair problem. He just started to move it around and manipulate it. Four hours later he had 80 to 90% of it removed – a success by any standard considering the circumstances. What is left of the tumor he described as if someone had used salt and pepper cancer shakers and had sprinkled ovarian cancer inside of her. But he felt that these small cancers would respond nicely to chemotherapy.
So at 81 my mother who made it through bladder cancer 12 years ago, brain surgery 11 years ago, and living with multiple myeloma for the past five years, will now have to recover from a large abdominal surgery leaving her with an incision that goes from her pubic bone to above her umbilicus, so that she can start chemotherapy. It seems like a lot to take in.
It has also been numbing to watch. After cleaning and clearing much of her apartment out over the past four days as well as visiting her almost every day and then waiting with my sister during the surgery, I come to Good Friday already spent. I am having a hard time connecting fully to the events of today. The thought did cross my mind that perhaps this is what it was like for the women of Jerusalem watching Christ suffer. A sort of disbelief at what is happening while at the same time a horror and revulsion of the suffering being witnessed. At least mom’s suffering is in a clean, quiet, compassionate environment. The followers of Christ on the road to Calvary didn’t even have that.
I took a rosary up to my mom yesterday in ICU. She of course is in no shape to say the rosary, but she grasped on to it and was grateful to have it as a tangible reminder to her of Christ’s presence in her life and her connection to Him.
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