Diagnosis Cancer

I remember the day my mother called me to tell me she had cancer like it was yesterday. It was April 10, 2007, a date which may be further burned into my brain because, as a tax accountant, it wasn't great timing. That sounds so cold and calculating to say it wasn't great timing, for after all, when would be a good time to hear your mother has the one thing you had feared most and it will definitely kill her, very soon? But, I can't help it. It was the worst timing in the world for me personally.

My mother and I have always had an interesting relationship. We got along much better on the telephone than in person. We had different tastes in things, an obvious difference in work ethic and drive, and yet, we were very close and very similar too. We fought a lot. But she was also my touchstone. The one person to whom I could turn, no matter what was going on in my life. For most of my adult life, this relationship was mainly by telephone. I talked to her regularly about everything. Particularly about my children, and venting about my husband or work, or she would tell me about Nascar, her passion. We talked about people from our small town; who got married, who got divorced, who moved away, who died. We talked about the weather, and our yards, or whatever funny thing had happened that week, or a good movie we had just seen, or a good book we had just read. We talked often, and for hours sometimes.

I knew, then, that she had not been feeling well. She was fighting a cold, and it had gone to her chest, and she sounded awful. When she was sick like that, I would call her more often, trying to urge her to go to the doctor, because she just wouldn't do it. She had to be very sick indeed, before she would actually go to the doctor. That week prior to the diagnosis, she was quite sick, and I was trying to convince her to be seen, as was her husband. Finally, she was so bad, that her husband convinced her to go to town, so she called to tell me she was going in to the emergency room, for whatever she had to do, because she was really ill.

I had a premonition about this. For several months I felt it coming, I knew something bad was coming, and I told my girlfriend about it at pool league one night. She looked at me like I was crazy. But I knew it. So when Mom called me that day, I had a feeling it was very serious, and I hung up and called Ellen. Ellen, my best friend, is an adminstrator at the hospital, and a nurse. I told her Mom was on the way in, and asked her to go check on her for me, as my home is some 275 miles from where my mother lived. She said that she would do it, and I left for my office. After all, it was tax season, and five days from the biggest deadline of the year.

A couple of hours after I got to the office, Ellen returned my call to tell me that Mom was getting some more tests done, but that she looked good, and was on some oxygen to help her breathe because of the fluid in her lungs, and that they were admitting her to the hospital. I believe that is the only time Ellen has outright lied to me in her life, but she did it for my mother. My mother, who always had her own version of reality, and lied to me many times in my life, which is yet another story, asked Ellen to lie to me, so that she could tell me the news herself, and my best friend in the world did it. I forgive her.

Unbeknownst to me, Ellen had arrived in my mother's room at the hospital only to find her completely falling apart after what she had just been told, and she was alone. Generally speaking, medical personnel will not tell someone they are terminal without someone else being there to support the patient. However, my mother, being the forceful and forthright person that she was, insisted they tell her the outcome of the tests before her husband had arrived, and thus was left alone. Ellen, who grew up with my Mom too, provided that support for a time until Paul and Mom's brother, Gary, had arrived. I appreciate the fact that she was there for Mom that day, and so did my mother.

Around 3pm that afternoon, when I was still not done for the day, but after most things had quieted down somewhat, I picked up the telephone to call Mom and see how she was doing, thinking innocently that she had pneumonia or something, because Ellen had assured me it wasn't anything terrible. There was something in her voice as she answered the phone, and I could feel it coming. She said, "Cheri, it isn't pneumonia. I have cancer." Then she broke down.

I remember I was standing up when I dialed the phone, because I don't stand up often enough when I am working. I collapsed into the chair, and made her repeat it. She gathered herself, and then said, "I have lung cancer. It's in my lungs, and my liver, and my chest cavity, and they are giving me three to six months to live." She said it exactly like that, just a list, a list of where the cancer was, and that it was hopeless. I sat there, tears streaming down my face, head hung down between my knees so I didn't faint, and I couldn't speak. I couldn't say anything. For several seconds we sat there, we two, both of us silently crying, 275 miles away from each other, on the telephone like we had been for thousands of hours in our lives, but no words, just crying.

Finally, I asked what was the plan, and she said she just didn't know. She said that all they would tell her was that it was lung cancer, and that she had maybe three to six months to live, and that there was nothing that could be done. She asked me to call my brother, and her sister and brother from out of town, and her best friend, and anyone else I could think of, because she just couldn't do it. It was all she could do to tell her husband, and her little brother, and especially me, and it was now my turn to tell the world that she would be leaving us soon. I couldn't talk any longer, and neither could she, so we probably had one of the shortest conversations we ever had. We both tried to eke out the words, I love you, as best we could, but we were both sobbing as we hung up the telephone.

I sat there for several minutes in my office chair, simply sobbing, as quietly as I could, so as not to disturb my staff, but they heard me. Finally, I got up, and went to tell them what I had just heard, and that I was leaving for the day. I packed up the work I was doing, and some extra to take home with me, because, after all, it was tax season, and I had to keep moving. I got in a loaner van from my client who is a tire dealer, as he had my Jeep in order to put new tires on it, and started to drive across Great Falls to my house, along the infamous 10th Avenue South strip, four lanes of ridiculous traffic for a town this small, and I lost it completely.

I can't be in a car by myself for too long without crying at some point. I have spent countless hours in cars by myself over the years; commuting in Washington DC, or driving across the country from Virginia to Montana, or driving on pretty much every major highway in the state of Montana at one point or another, and some of them, so many times I know every turn and hill. I do a lot of thinking in cars, even on short distances. So, as soon as I was in the minivan, I lost my composure entirely, and started to audibly sob, almost to the point where I was having trouble seeing.

Suddenly, about halfway across town, I looked in my rearview mirror and focused long enough to see a police car behind me with his lights flashing. I looked down to make sure I wasn't speeding, which was impossible in the traffic anyway, but I wasn't, so I couldn't figure out why he would be stopping me. I was in the left lane, in lots of traffic, at a terrible part of town to be turning left, but finally found an outlet, and was in the turn lane to turn left, when the cop started to walk up to me to talk to me. I couldn't figure out how to open the window, so I opened the door instead, and as we were still in the turn lane between four lanes of traffic, I asked if he didn't want me to finish pulling off the street; what an idiot, by the way. Finally, I pulled over and he came up to interrogate me, as I struggled with trying to figure out how to lower the window. Finally having opened the window, I asked him what I had done wrong, to which he responded that he needed to see my license and registration. I was still crying, and trying to calm down, so I am sure I looked a mess. I asked again what I had done, while I retrieved my license from my purse, and explained to him that I wasn't crying because he had pulled me over, but rather that it was due to some tragic family news I had just received.

He proceeded to tell me, sarcastically, that my license plates were overdue some six months. I blurted out that it wasn't even my car, in fact, I didn't even know where the registration was, and that it was the property of the tire store. Finally, after searching every cubby I could find in a vehicle I knew nothing about, I found the registration to prove to him it was not my vehicle. He ultimately calmed down a bit, as he realized he wouldn't be able to ticket me that day, as I was an innocent party, and let me go with the stern warning to tell my client to get the situation fixed before he went lending vehicles to customers in the future.

Finally, I was able to finish my drive home, a little calmer after the situation with the police officer, so in hindsight, it was probably good he pulled me over. I was much more composed as I entered the house, and proceeded to tell my husband and children the terrible news about Mom. Then, I went to my office to plan. I am a planner, and a doer. I don't sit idly by watching the world, or simply letting it happen. I plan, and I act. So, I went to my office, my hole, as Rusty calls it, and I cried, and I cried, and I thought, and I planned. Do you know what they say about the best laid plans?