The weekend from hell

We called mom before heading down to the hospital, she was worried. When we got to the hospital mom was exhausted. The battery of tests had really worn on her. She was weak and slow to speak. The next morning we met with one of her doctors. He was painting a dire picture for us. She may not leave the hospital, alive. Hospice should be brought up with your mom. He said the cancer had metastasized over bones throughout her body, and quite possibly her liver too.

For years my mom had been meeting with a doctor at the UofM hospital who specialized in liver transplants. I knew something was up with the liver, just not what. Now it appeared as though her liver was on the brink of failure, her white blood cell count kept climbing, an indicator of infection, and she was unable to digest even a liquid diet, ten full days after her surgery. The surgery site wound was having troubles healing, the staff is literally opening up the wound and cleaning it out because her body is unable to do so. We were interrupted from visiting with my mom numerous times by nurses doing their thing. Throughout the day we took breaks and headed over to the house to look through paperwork.

This also was the day of the local stage race for the Great River Energy Bicycle Festival/Nature Valley Grand Prix, so we headed down the hill to check things out. The route was 75 miles around towns I had spent some time in growing up, and I had family connections to many of the small towns, I decided not to bore heather with all the gruesome details. The final bit of the race is in Mankato proper, four laps, each time straight up Main Street Hill, a hill so steep that before fuel injection technology cars would have to go up hill in reverse so that the gas would feed into the engine.

With heavy hearts we headed back to the hotel for the evening, to try to relax in the hot tub and pool, and prepare for the big benefit for mom at her church in the morning. The hardest part of this was that mom didn't want everyone to know about the bone cancer. We decided to tell some folks and keep things from others. This pained me because I believe that the power of naming something allows people to understand and cope with it better.

The benefit was to be held at Belgrade Avenue United Methodist Church. The church I grew up in, and where my mom has been a member since the mid 70's. A family friend suggested that an organization that she is affiliated with could generate matching funds. Most of the congregation came down for breakfast, I was able to see many folks I had not seen for a very long time, some who I had met only once or Mom had spoken about over the phone. Mom's mother showed up along with her sister and eldest niece. At the end of the event well over the matching amount was raised, so my mom will have the ability to catch up on some bills that she is behind on.

Exhausted, and wanting to have some fun on our 7th wedding anniversary we headed back home to visit with friends at Izzy's Ice Cream Cafe and the 7th annual people's choice awards. See the thing is, among our circle of friends, ice cream plays an important role. So much in fact that some of our friends submitted flavors to this competition, and the man who coined the term ice cream stomach was there with his flavor "Marshberry and Cash." So we had to go, in an attempt to garner this man some votes to win the competition. Alas, he did not win the grand prize, but his flavor did win the category.

Finally getting home we called mom again, she had many visitors was tired, but was doing OK. We were very concerned that the cancer would conquer mom, we were wanting every contact with her to be a gift.