For those who have encountered my commentary let me peel back the curtain to see my gene pool. My dad can best be described as part Rodney Dangerfield, part Ernest Borgnine and just a pinch of Johnathan Winters but I'll leave him for another story. My mom was 1/2 Laura Petrie 1/2 Ellen Ripley. Meaning she was a typical sitcom mom who could address any crisis in 20 minutes or less with slacks of course. Now if you got her angry she was a 5 foot nothing acid bleeding alien berserker killing machine.
My mom had a command of logistics that was awesome she probably could have planned the Normandy invasion although considering she was in grade school at the time the block print and crayon would have been suspicious. As she was taught by her mother who could come up with the worst case scenario and 6 backup plans she made me a respectable professional disaster planner.
So what happened. From my mother's gene pool my mother, my uncle her kid brother and I have one leg slightly shorter than the other. My uncle shattered his leg on a tree at 15 so his condition is worse. So here we are with a bit of a limp. With age the knees hips and back act up. Since 9/11 I've only really started to feel it. So here's my mom looking at 70 who thinks twice about Motrin level pain starting about 6 months ago. Last tuesday 2/10 the Motrin stopped working.
My dad got her to one of those walk-in clinics. The doctor poked prodded freaked out and begged her to get to a hospital. The ambulance was called. The hospital emergency team bearing a resemblance to the Dr. House and his team did their work by 8PM she was in a hospital room. From 2/11 to 2/14 they poked prodded scanned took fluids, needle biopsies and then some time before Saturday 2/14 gave her a death sentence.
She came home for about 12 hours on Saturday 2/14 and dropped the bomb on me. Cancer it's everywhere and there's nothing they can do but prolong it. So my mom in full Ellen Ripley mode, her voice a whisper ,nuked me from orbit. At 1am 2/15 the pain cocktail; Morphine pills and Fentanyl patches they sent her home with failed to deal with the pain and she couldn't catch her breath. With a 911 call back to the Hospital she went.
To backfill, cancer killed her mother and two sisters. My mom's older sister colon cancer took 4 years and umpteen surgeries to kill her in 1987. 18 months for my mom's kid sister Lung cancer 1996 and her mom 1994 Lung. Mom made it quite plain in her Ellen Ripley voice she didn't want extra ordinary means to keep her around and she didn't want anyone to see her like that;they way they looked. So no calls until after the Urn is back.
Back in the hospital. As per my mom's wishes we kiboshed the breathing tube so that made the hospital get creative. they gave her a IV cocktail of Steroids, Narcotic pain killers and antibiotics. A 1am Monday and Tuesday calls had us back at the hospital her passing on imminent as per the night shift doctor. Tuesday into Wednesday morning no calls she was relatively comfortable her organs started to fail she died this morning just after 10 am respiratory arrest basically due to multiple organ failure; liver kidneys and lungs.
They're calling it as uterine cancer; based on the size of the largest tumor; that spread everywhere in less than a month. This scared the doctors. The pathology department was having trouble with the needle biopsy and as of yet couldn't give us the "Cell type"(Cancer species). She didn't want to be chopped up in a autopsy so my dad sucked it up and in his Ernest Borgnine mode worked out the details with the crematorium this afternoon.
So for the sake of the women or men in your family don't let them shrug off those aches,pains and cramps.
Update 1 0903PM: The Rec list I am grateful. I don't know what my mom would have thought her Laura Petrie side would have smiled her Ellen Ripley side would have given me the melt rock glare for making a fuss.