Unpleasant surprise

Here I am on a Monday evening, marooned in a hospital room, dealing with the most unexpected of events; my mother has cancer.  What started out as lower back pain a few weeks back escalated into searing pain in the mid section, resulting in a visit to the emergency room 9 days ago.  Tests followed, and last Tuesday there was laproscopic surgery to take tissue samples.  Preliminary tests have shown cancer, definitely in the lymph nodes and possibly in other parts of the body as well.  The point of origin has yet to be determined.  Pathology reports will come back this week which will tell us the extent of the cancer spread, how far along it has progressed, and possibly a point of origin.  Then a protocol can be set up to treat the cancer with chemo-therapy.  There are too many lesions for surgical removal of the cancer. 

This is all happening to a woman who has never smoked, rarely drinks, eats mostly organic foods, always takes care of her body, and practices yoga daily.  The first thought that came to my mind when the surgeon told us after performing the laproscopy, that he suspected cancer, was what a fucked up world we live in that something like this is happening to such a good hearted, clean living person with no other medical problems.  This thing really snuck up on us.  I always suspected that something like this might happen, being that my mother has a close family history of cancer, her mother had breast and ovarian cancer, her sister is currently battling breast cancer, and her father's mother also had cancer.  I never pictured we would have to deal with this at such a young age (she is 59) and I never thought it would be so omnipresent in her body.

It took 3 days to come to the realization that this was something that we were going to fight no matter what.  We have supportive friends and family and that is a major help.  We will fight this.