What I won't do for my mom

My mom has cancer. Leukemia. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL. She is 58, and she has already had cancer once before. That was breast cancer, stage 3, in her lymph nodes and required high doses of chemo and extensive radiation. She was in remission for 8 years, and just when I thought my life couldn't get any better, she is lying in the emergency room at Aultman Hospital.

Her heart rate, blood pressure, and pulse are all normal, even though she was admitted with a suspected heart attack. I am watching the heart monitor, and everything looks fine. There is a bag of blood hanging, already being infused. "Julia, you know all this. Think. Why would they be giving me blood. My white blood cells are high..." A single tear rolls over her cheek and into the corner of her mouth. Everything is always a lesson, always an opportunity to help me with my schoolwork. "Think. I know you know this." My mind is completely blank. High white blood cells? Giving her blood? I have no idea. That' s a big fail for the person who just sat through five years of school to enter the medical field. "I have leukemia. They don't know for sure, but the doctors are pretty sure of it. They're running the blood tests again." But you know how sometimes you just know things? Really know them, in your heart and even deeper in your soul? She knew, and I knew. And the doctors already knew but they were trying to find a way out of having to deliver this news, hoping the second blood test would turn out differently. "Oh, sorry. False alarm. You're free to go."

My mom started to cry. And I started to breathe heavy, my head got fuzzy, and my knees wouldn't hold me anymore. I fell to the floor, against the chair in the corner of the room, and I remember crying and screaming, "NO" as loud as I could. And she doesn't tell me to be quiet, or that it would be ok, or to calm down. She just cries. My life immediately came to a halt. All the things I thought were good and fair and happy and going well, they all seemed like a big fat joke. I would give anything for that monitor to have shown a mild heart attack. How different things would have been...walks in the park and learning how to cook heart-healthy meals. Instead, we are learning how to pack food with calories and protein to help her gain back some of her weight, we are avoiding fresh fruits and vegetables to make sure she doesn't get an infection, and we are looking at her now the same way everyone looked at my aunt Polly.

My aunt Polly also had cancer. Breast cancer, stage 3, in her lymph nodes, which required high doses of chemotherapy and extensive radiation. She went into remission. Sound familiar? Almost.

5 years went by, and she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in all four quadrants of her liver and spleen. stage 4. there is no stage 5. that's it. the doctors gave her 3 years, but she lived for 4 and 1/2. but this is another story for another time. but considering that my mom was diagnosed in March and my aunt Polly died in April...i'm sure you are smart enough to figure out why everyone now looks at my mom like they did my aunt Polly. but I will not look at her that way.

I will look at her the way she wants to be looked at. Like a mother. A sister. A wife. A loyal friend, and a loyal worker to her job. She never wanted to be a spectacle or to be show-offy for anything. She just wanted to be quiet and to live her life. She wanted to be independent, to have her own money, and she has always been proud of that.

That night, the night she was diagnosed, she sat on the edge of her bed with her feet hanging over the edge. My dad was in the corner of the room sitting on the chair, and I was huddled in a ball at the foot of her bed. The doctor had just left the room, telling us overwhelming amounts of information. My mom hung her head and it shook side to side, and she began to cry again. "All I ever wanted to do was grow old with you guys." And that's really all she's ever wanted.

There are endless things I would do for my mother. I would cut off all my hair and donate it in her name. I would raise money for 9 years in a row for the Relay for Life and walk past her luminary, feeling happy and sad at the same time. I would start a collection drive for donations for the Hope Lodge in Cleveland so when she stays there after her bone marrow transplant, she can feel like she has given them something in return. I would uproot my entire life, move an hour away from my boyfriend, my family, my friends, and my dearest of all, my mom, to take an internship at the Cleveland Clinic so I can be there when she gets her transplant. There are many things I would do for her, just to be near her.

But there are things that I won't do for my mother. I won't ask, "What did we do wrong?" I won't quit school. I won't get sick and depressed and forget what the women in my family have taught me. I won't sacrifice what I have worked so hard for, because she would not want that. I will not let this crush me, and I will not crack under all of this pressure. I won't change my attitude or my personality. And I won't give up the fight against cancer. And I won't bury her before she is gone, which she has asked me to avoid countless times. This is the hardest. This is what I struggle with most. Even I am worried she will be like aunt Polly. "Don't bury me yet. Don't give up yet," she says over and over again, with me on the other end of the phone, trying to recover from a horrible image of her in the bed where my aunt Polly died. I won't let this image take me down. I won't let this disease take me down. And I won't let it take her down.