Mom

Where to start.  I have been wanting to record what's happened while it's still fresh in my mind.

Back in December my mom was having some issues of the female variety and became a little concerned.  She made an appointment with an ob/gyn but they couldn't get her in until January.  At her appointment her Dr told her that her uterus felt really hard and told her to get an ultrasound. At the ultrasound they found a large mass on her ovary, about the size of a grapefruit.  The radiologist came in and expressed his deep concern.  He said it looked really worrisome and sent the pictures to her Dr in Salt Lake right away.  Her Dr. called her that evening and told her she was scheduling her for surgery.  She would have a hysterectomy, remove the mass and repair damage done to her bladder from the mass.  They scheduled her surgery at Huntsman Cancer Institute.  There were 3 doctors performing the surgery, one to remove the mass, one to do the hysterectomy and one to repair her bladder.  So in order to coordinate all of their schedules, they couldn't get her in for another 2 weeks.  We were all concerned about this because my mom was in more and more pain every day and able to eat less and less.  I called her Dr's nurse to see if there was anyway we could get the surgery moved up. She was very sweet and understanding but basically said no way. Not with 3 Dr's on board.  My mom spoke with another nurse and expressed her concern about waiting that long and the nurse told her that there are only 7 gynecological oncologists in all of Utah and that she has one of the best performing her surgery, along with a gynecological bladder specialist and her very wonderful ob/gyn, and that it was an act of God that she was even able to get in in January.  We had held a family fast right after the ultrasound and I really believe it was an act of God and an answer to our prayers.

Fast forward to the day of the surgery.  I was still in Houston.  We figured it would be best for me to come when my mom was discharged from the hospital so I could go to Loa and take care of her. My mom is barely able to eat anything at this point.  The mass has grown so large it makes her abdomen stick out to the point she looks 5 or 6 months pregnant.  Needless to say, she is miserable.  Going into the surgery her Dr told her that there was a 50/50 chance that it was cancer.  She had met with the local Wayne County Dr in the interim and she told him what was going on and explained what her ultrasound pictures showed.  He told her that based on her ultrasound, it was most likely cancer.  The mass was made up of two substances, which is very indicative of cancer.  As opposed to a cyst which is fluid.

In the weeks before the surgery it was very difficult not to cry and imagine the worst.  Obviously, I was upset and worried.  Worried that I would lose my mom, and terrified of what she would have to grow through if it was cancer.  I kept thinking about my aunt that had died of stomach cancer several years ago.  I remembered going and seeing her a few days before she passed away.  She was at home being taken care of by my sweet uncle.  She was in so much pain and so near the end that she was just a shell of the woman I knew.   It broke my heart to see her like that and it broke my heart to think of my mom having to go through that.

Don and Maddie would text me through out the surgery and give me updates.  After about 6 hours that seemed like a thousand, Maddie called me and said, "It's benign!"  The only way I can describe my reaction is to compare it to Emma Thompson's in "Sense and Sensibility" when she finds out Hugh Grant's character isn't actually married. Uncontrollable weeping.  Oh my goodness the relief.

The mass ended up being the size of a volleyball.  And there were actually two.  The first, smaller one was a calcified teratoma.  There were bits of bone and hair in it! It was inside the large one, which was filled with a substance that Michael said was like Caro Syrup.  That's why it appeared as two different substances in the ultrasound.  Michael works in the gross lab at Huntsman and he was there when her uterus and the mass arrived.  He said he was holding her uterus in his hands staring at it and a co worker asked him what he was doing.  He said, "Just looking at the place where I grew up."  Amazing!

My mom stayed at Huntsman for 5 days, where my cousin, whose mother is the one who passed away from cancer, was my moms nurse.  I flew out the day she was released and was able to go home and take care of her for a few weeks.  I am SO incredibly grateful I could go and wish that I could have stayed longer.  It is going to be a lengthy recovery for sure.  I have never cried when I leave my family to come back home, or when they have come to visit me and have to leave.  But leaving my mom this time, I bawled.  I cried all the way to the top of Fishlake and periodically until we got to my Dad's in Lindon.

A week after the surgery, my mom went back to the Dr to get her staples removed and to get the results of the biopsy.  The Dr. said my mom has borderline something something something. She said she was going to present the pathology results to a group of oncologists at Huntsman the following week, because she wasn't quite sure what the next step should be.  We looked up the term when my mom got home and it is stage 1 ovarian cancer. So we were really confused.  Was it benign, was it cancer?  But her Dr never called it cancer specifically?  All of the oncologists at Huntsman met and discussed her case and concluded that they had never seen this pathology before so they were going to send it on to Harvard to get their opinion. A week later her Dr. called again and said her pathology report had been sent to Johns Hopkins for a second opinion, and all of their Dr's. said they had never seen anything like it either.  Given all this, they decided to have her come back in and have her appendix removed and do a biopsy of her fat "apron" to see if there are any more of these cells lurking about.  She goes back in in April.  If there are no questionable cells then they will call it good.  If there are...we don't really know what the next step will be. Her Dr said she will probably go down in the history books.  So the roller coaster ride isn't quite over, but we are all, especially my mom, very optimistic.

I have really seen some amazing miracles through out this process.  My parents don't have health insurance.  My step dad is self employed, and basically, if you own your own business, health insurance is ridiculously expensive and they haven't been able to afford it.  To make an even longer story some what shorter, through a series of events my mom was really led to this particular ob/gyn.  She didn't know that she practiced through Huntsman.  But because she is affiliated with them, this amazing network of Dr's was opened up to her.  At my mom's follow up appointment her Dr, Dr. Pittman, told my mom that all three Dr's had waived their fee, and so had Huntsman.  $40,000. She said, "your balance is zero."  In addition, she told her that any more work they do in reference to this mass ie, her appendectomy and biopsy, will be free as well.

I believe that this happened because my mom has never once faltered in paying a generous tithe.  There have been times when it comes down to "pay the bills or pay tithing" and my mom has always chosen to pay tithing.  And it always works out, usually in a pretty miraculous way.  I believe this is just one of those miracles.

I am so incredibly grateful for my mom and the person that she is.  I don't think I could admire anyone more. I look back at my teenage years when I know a lot of girls think their mom is nuts or really bothersome.  At least that's the stereotype.  But I don't recall ever arguing with my mom or thinking anything other than she was my best friend.  I thought she was literally perfect for years. I still think, though, that she is as close to perfect as one can get in this life. Every important lesson I've learned in life has come from watching and listening to her.  I hope I can be half the person she is.