"I'm glad I'll have more time with you"

When my mom first said this to me today, after we got home from the oncologist, I thought she meant “I’m glad I got to spend more time with you today.” But she didn’t.

She meant: I’ve chosen to do the treatment (radiation and the chemo) and I’m glad I get to be with you a little longer, before I die.

That’s the first time she and I have really talked about the cancer. We talk all the time about her progress in recovering from the stroke – that’s the obvious, easy stuff to talk about. And I’ve talked with my dad a lot about the cancer, and he’s talked with my mom a lot about the cancer. But I hadn’t talked to her at all about the cancer.

And I know she was trying to protect me by not talking about it – still trying to be my mom, still trying to be strong for my sister and I. (I wrote a post about this earlier.) And I know I was trying to still be her baby daughter, still wanting her to take care of me and coddle me like she used to, protecting me from all the worlds ills, and making everything okay. 

But today, when me, my sister, my dad and my mom were all in the room when the oncologist said that if she did treatment, her median life expectancy was a year, but if she didn’t do treatment, she would probably only live two or three months, that was when she and I realized we couldn’t pretend, couldn’t avoid it anymore.

She chose to do treatment because she wants more time with us. Because if she didn’t, she could be dead by Christmas, and that’s just not enough time.

So instead she will do treatment, radiation & chemo every day for 6 weeks, and then chemo five days a week for the next year. And maybe with treatment she’ll live til next October, or maybe the October after that or maybe… we don’t know. But however long it is, it’s more time.

If the radiation and the chemo make her too sick, though, she’s going to stop. They’re not supposed to be too bad. (“In 99% of cases, so and so was skipping and jumping* with extra energy from the chemo – its very well tolerated” *skipping and jumping is an exaggeration. Do not try this at home.) But in case they are, she needs to be free to choose a good quality of life for her last days, even if she has fewer days left.

But regardless of the chemo, and the radiation, and her quality of life now (I mean, she can’t pee without help. She can’t dress herself without help.), and all the extra craziness of blood clots and seizures, and even my dad’s eye surgery, she still wants more time. She wants more time with us. She wants more time with me. She said it very clearly to me: “I’m glad I’ll have more time with you.”

And I’m glad that I’ll have more time with her, too.