A Difficult Post

This post has been mulling around in my head for a little bit now and I think it's time to write it out.  Over the holidays this past year, my family and I got some horrible news.  My Mom was diagnosed with colon cancer.  We knew something was going on with Mom because over Thanksgiving she had lost a lot of blood, was admitted into the hospital, and given a blood transfusion.  During the month of December, Mom was checked out to try and figure out where she was loosing blood and they found a tumor in a bend in her intestines, near her colon that would have been invisible to doctors unless they were actually looking for something.  They tested the tumor, found it was malignant and took it out. While the doctors were operating, they did not find any other cells migrating from the tumor in the area where the tumor was and also did not see any indication that her lymph nodes are involved.  She is still waiting to see an oncologist to see if she needs to go through any radiation/chemo, but so far, everything looks good.

In the mean time, Mom is healing.  She had fluid under her incision site that needed to be drained, but other than that, she's doing pretty good.  She is slowly being able to sleep in her bed but still needs to go out to her chair after a while because she is still in pain.  Mom seems to be in good spirits right now and is expecting a clean bill of health after seeing the oncologist.  We are all hoping for the clean bill of health.

I really haven't been able to talk about this, really with anyone.  I felt that if I did, somehow it would become MORE real and turn into my worst nightmare, loosing one of my parents - loosing my mom.  I am not ready to loose my parents, I can't even think about it.  I just don't know what I would do without my mom.  I feel like even though we have always been close, that our relationship just keeps getting better the older I get.  And even though she will always be my Mom, she is also my best friend.

So, to all my friends who are learning about this for the first time through this post, I'm sorry I didn't talk to anyone about this.  It's not that I don't trust you, it's not that I didn't want to - I just couldn't.  I couldn't make this any more real by talking about it.  I wanted to wake up and have this all be just a nightmare.  I couldn't let this cancer have any more power.

But, the other night I went to a Grandfather Fire Ceremony with a new friend.  The talking stick was passed around and I was SURE I wasn't going to say anything.  When the talking stick got to me, this story flooded out of me and I felt a release.  I realized I had been holding on to this so tight!  I didn't even notice how much I was being affected by NOT talking about it.  So, I decided to write about it.  I decided to write this post and to put it out there into the universe.  I should have done this a month ago.

Thank you for reading.