I have been wanting to sit down for sometime and store some thoughts about my feelings recently but there just has been an overload of emotions that I felt I could not handle it all. I have even more now. When I was pregnant with my son, my beautiful mother was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia. This is very different from Acute as that the person suffering from it will live a longer life, only need treatments as needed and mostly likely die of other natural causes. So for thirteen years she battled this cancer, while I battled my own, which was a much easier battle, her granddaughter battled hers, and her daughter lost her life to her own in 2009. Mine was the easier of the bunch. I had mine removed and even though it was stage four, there were no treatments and it did not spread, I count myself very lucky and blessed by this fact, it could have been so much worse. My niece lost one of her kidneys and had to do chemotherapy, she is a healthy, happy 11 year old that you would never know from looking at her that she battled cancer at six months. My sister was diagnosed shortly after marrying her sweet husband. She fought a long hard battle for eight months and passed away on May 7th, 2009, four days before her birthday, and a full ten days before her first anniversary. My mom lost her sister to cancer and my dad lost his brother and his beloved wife. Needless to say, we really do not like cancer, in fact we hate the disease in our family. It has caused treasures to suffer, taken treasures and taken them much too early. So yes, my mom died, Sept. 9th, 2011, twenty days before her birthday, and at almost 48 years of marriage, what a feat for my parents. Most assuredly soul mates, I promise you, I have never doubted my parents love for each other. My son discovered something on the way home from scouts last night. We were discussing the meaning of first and middle names with two of the scouts we give rides to. After dropping them off I told him to look up my parents names. Charles and Carolyn. Both are Germanic, Charles means manly farmer, while Carolyn means Joy feminine but is a variant of Charles meaning manly. Grandpa told him that means they were looking for tough names because Grandma was a strong woman, which she really was, but I told my dad, it really just goes to show how much they were meant to be together, they had the same names, just the male/female version of them. While she was battled the Leukemia, she also battled breast cancer, and survived. You see, my mother was a nurse and remained in nursing until the day she passed from this earth into the hands of our Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ. What does this have to do with everything and her cancer, it helped her survive if you ask me. Taking care of others kept my mother going. She was extraordinary nurse, and as some people put it, an example of what nurses should be. She had nine children, two of them twins (which was unexpected). At the time she was expecting myself and my twin sister, she had six children at home and was going to college, working and taking care of all her children. She wound up having to quit her dream for a time period because twins were just a bit harder than she thought, but that did not stop her. When we were in fourth and fifth grade, after taking classes through night school to get her prerequisites, she went to school full time two hours away to graduate with her RN. With this RN she became a Nurse Manager, later a Director of Nursing, then went back to Nurse Manager because of her cancer due to the treatments and stress, the first time I have ever seen my mother say something was too much for her. What an amazing woman, and not just because she was my mom. She helped me be a better mother, I learned from her what to do when I became a single mother after my divorce, it saved me a lot of heartache in watching my son be torn between two mean and hateful parents, because I reserved judgement and never spoke and still do not speak about his dad unkindly. My parents babysat for me (all while she was working full time, taking care of a husband who had serious health issues off and on), he loves his grandpa and grandma and is extremely close to them. He misses grandma so much.
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| My beautiful mom and my dad |
Recently in my old ward, we just moved to another part of post and changed wards, a little three year old girl was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She just passed away yesterday. While I am still grieving myself, it has been hard to separate the two. I had the opportunity to help her parents out while they were getting ready to leave church my last Sunday in the ward. They needed someone to sit with her as they were loading up the rest of their family. So I offered to help out since I was hunting mom down anyway to giver her something. I cannot describe how frustrating it was to not know how to help this sweet little angel. The tumor had affected her speech and only mom and dad could really understand her wants and needs. I was showing her pictures on my iPad. Come to find out when dad got there, she wanted to shop for earrings and nail polish. Even in her most frustrating moments, she was still happy and wanted to be normal. Although I could not comply, my iPad does not have data usage, I thought how wonder it was that she still was a little girl. While I only got a glimpse of their day, if it can even be called that, it was an eye opener for me for sure. I had a sick child when my son was born, but nothing to that extent. I was always grateful that my son survived the things he went through as a baby, surgery, viral meningitis, high fevers, flu, scarlet fever, and another rash with high fever. It was not easy, and certainly very scary to say the least, but having a child with cancer and seeing how helpless they are, watching them suffer through treatments, being sick, that is something no child should have to go through, and then there is the fact that some of them die. I cannot imagine the pain of the loss of a child. My parents had to experience, my grandmother had to experience it. Each handled it differently, I can tell you that, but I saw the sadness in their eyes knowing they lost a child, even if it was an adult child. Being a parent does not change that. How do you cope with that? I hope and pray I never find out. This sweet little girl was vibrant, beautiful and touched many hearts. I will share her CaringBridge and encourage anyone who reads this to please read her story. The tumor she had is rare, and this makes the second child I know that has died from it. How truly sad to lose so small and so innocent children to such a horrible disease. I am also going to share another thing. Here is the CaringBridge:
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/miraclemadidouglas
and here is the other site it is called The Cure Starts Now:
http://www.thecurestartsnow.org/
It was started by parents who also lost their child to the same type of tumor. Please keep these families that have children suffer from these tumors in your thoughts and prayers. I know this is not the most happiest of post on my blog, but I felt a need to get the words out.
