When I returned back home for the summer, my mom seemed okay. She just seemed as though she was a bit rattled most of the time, but to be expected. I think if he wasn’t rattled, there would be a problem. The only thing I did notice was her handwriting was a bit shaky and that she also gave me so much love and affection. Not that she didn’t before, but for example, my first day of my internship she packed a lunch for me, and wrote a note that said, “Have a Great First Day” (which I still have framed). She normally wouldn’t do something like this, given I have had many first days before. It seemed almost as though she wanted something like that for me to cherish in the future. Damn this lady was smart. Either that or she knew me well enough I would cherish this beyond anything else. Or both. Honestly, I think both.
My first few days felt normal in the house, but then I started to notice things in my mom. For starters, her handwriting on the note was shaky, and I could see a very slight slant on the right side of her face. The same slight slant that of a stroke survivor would have. It wasn’t that I saw certain signs that I thought ‘Okay, this is it, this is what cancer looks like’ It was more like there were chapters or steps in the memories I have of my mother’s Brain Cancer.
One of the Chapters I would say would be when I had to take the keys away from my mother. I don’t recall if it was the first or second week I had returned home from college, but it was near the beginning. This was a time that if she had a slight in her face that was the worst thing we’d had seen. If only we knew what we had waiting for us in just a month. I was fortunate enough to intern in Manhattan, so a couple times a week I would take the train into the city, and then back. Normally I would walk home from the station, but I remember clearly this day, my mom wanted to pick me up from the train station and then we would run a couple errands.
My mom was a very strong headed individual and even when she was at her most sick, she would not take no for an answer. So, I let her pick me up that day from work. When we had been driving in our small town, we were on one of the busier streets of the town. My mom wanted to go to the bank before we went home. Part of me was a bit weary of this, as I was not even sure if she was allowed to drive. I mean, how safe would you feel if someone with two inoperable tumors was operating a moving death trap. As we pulled from the train station onto the busy road, we had approached an intersection where we had to take a left turn. As we crept into the light, I could tell something was wrong. It was almost as though my mom’s reflexes to know to slow the car down to abide by the cars in front of us were delayed. We drove right into on-coming traffic. Luckily we took the left turn and I asked her to pull over to a nearby street.
That’s when I immediately knew that my gut was right, and her reflexes were so greatly impaired. I sternly said ‘Mom. Give me the keys.’ She did. Her willingness to give the keys to quickly served as an affirmation of my fear. She never gave up easily. After this I knew things were going to be different. I never had to talk to her about not driving. After this, she never drove again, she just knew.
I know what your main concern is here… did we get to the bank? Absolutely. My mom and I? Damn right. We may know when to stop, but we are not quitters. I ended up driving. Referring back to chapters of my mom’s cancer that summer, that felt like the “Car Chapter”. The time between chapters felt like blurs but in a weird way every single day was different. That’s the sucky part about Brain Cancer. It manifests so quickly that you never have time to catch it or even predict what is next. One day my mom could walk, the next day she could barely speak. But in the most terrible day, you think that present day is the worst that it can get, but it just gets worse. Knowing this however, you have to present yourself and your family to the world as if everything is normal. You have to present yourself and everyone else as normal to the actual patient. Meanwhile both you, the caregivers and family and the patient are fighting an incurable beast that seems to feed off everyone’s tired, fighting bodies. The Car incident was one of many chapters that would compile a book called Brain Cancer in the Summer of 2018.
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