What does this do...?

I've sat down at the computer the last few days, checked my e-mail and wondered...what else do I do when I'm on here? Yeah, I've been a bit scattered and unfocused. I haven't been keeping up on your blogs as much--I'm sorry. I've been wanting to write...and not wanting to write. I realize that what I put out here may be read by people that don't know me and interpreted differently than intended. I am also aware that my mother reads this blog too, but at least she knows me and likely knows my intent. Having said all that, I'll say that a cancer diagnosis in the family doesn't just affect the one person. It affects the entire unit and that is where things get hard.

On Friday my mom had her appointment with the specialist. After a couple of hours my sister and I start shooting emails back and forth "have you heard anything?", "no, me neither", "what is going on?", etc. Finally my father calls around 12:30 and says "Well, they are going to clean her out like a Christmas turkey!" You'd have to know me or this family to understand that in this family, that is appropriate talk for "she's going in for a radical resection".

My parents were scheduled to come down to my house long before we received this diagnosis and they stuck to the plan. I'll admit, I was concerned that I was going to dissolve into tears again the minute I saw her. I kept reminding myself "Nothing has really changed. Everything is the same". I think people confuse the tears and think I am planning her funeral. Quite the opposite--I'm planning the rest of her life with all the changes in it. I'm just very sad that she has to go through this at all. She has never been sick, never had a surgery, never been hospitalized except for when she gave birth to my sister and me. I know that she is now going to have to get screened for recurrent cancer outbreaks. it's not like the old days where they used to tell you after five years of remission you are cured. New research shows that people fall through the cracks after 5 years and die at 8 years when cancer returns. My mother's goal has always been to live until 100 and I'm going to help her in any way that I can to meet that goal.

The other part of this diagnosis is knowing more intimately how it may some day affect me. I have never had biological children and I am overweight. These things make me a higher risk. My mother's sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about 15 years ago. She was still in her early 40s.

I think everyone in my family is getting a wake-up call. I'm going to the gym here shortly to work on my wake-up call, my dad is planning on seeing an internist once Mom is recovered and my sister, well, she is planning on getting pregnant one more time.

Thank you for all your kind comments and your prayers. We have really felt them the past couple of days.