Better than Expected

I went home over this weekend so I could be with my mom after she had her second surgery. This procedure was to test the lymph nodes in her breast for cancer cells. I left Geneseo around 8:45 a.m. and got to the hospital a little before noon. It's not an extremely long drive but the last hour seemed to take forever! When I got there my step-dad Jim was in the room alone. They had taken mom in at 10:45 and it was probably about 45 minutes after I arrived the surgeon came back to tell us he was done. She did great and the surgery went well with no complications. He removed a lymph node and did a preliminary test in the operating room. It was negative for cancer!!!!! If it had been positive he would have taken all the lymph nodes out or done a mastectomy if that's what my mom wanted. But that wasn't necessary so he went back into the original lump site and took more tissue just in case there was a chance other cancer cells from the tumor were there.

She came out of recovery around 1:30 p.m. The anesthesia makes her cry (I learned this is a common side effect for some people) so as soon as she saw me she burst into tears. I was uneasy when they wheeled her into the hallway and I could see her through the crack in the door. I have barely ever seen my mom with the stomach flu and she rarely missed work from being ill, so I wasn't sure how I was going to take seeing her after surgery in a hospital bed hooked up to IVs. It was hard but probably would have been worse if the lymph test had been positive because we would have been thinking about much less pleasant things. They told her while in the recovery room that the test was negative and she felt more relieved to know than anything else. But man was she drugged up! It was hilarious to hear to say over and over again how stoned she felt, and she kept making me promise to never do drugs, hahahahaha. We stayed there for another 3 hours while most of the anesthesia was flushed out of her system and she felt well enough to go home.

We got home around 4:30 and I ordered dinner while she got in her pj's. We stayed in and watched movies, did sudoku and read all day Saturday. The only time I left the house was to go to mass and pick up pizza for dinner. It was so relaxing and nice to spend the day with my mom. I don't even know when the last time we did that was. It may have been the first! By Saturday night she was feeling more like herself and Sunday morning we went out to breakfast before I left. I didn't like leaving but it wasn't so bad knowing that she is going to be ok. Plus I missed this guy named Isaiah and kind of wanted to see him.

So now the next step is to get the final test results from the lymph nodes. The preliminary test was negative but the sample still needs to go to the lab and be tested again. The surgeon said it's rare the second round of tests comes up positive after a preliminary negative result, so we are hopeful it will remain negative. We will know for sure on Thursday. We also don't know the exact treatment but it will probably be radiation every day for six to eight weeks. She will probably drive herself the hour there and back, but radiation makes you really tired so someone else will most likely go with her. Jim will try to go with her as much as he can but he still needs to work full days, where my mom will work half days and then leave at noon to go to Binghamton. I could also take more time off and work remotely from home in the mornings and take her in the afternoon some weeks if needed. I think we need to know more about what she will need to do before working out logistics.

I am back in Geneseo now and my sister and I have been feeling better about the whole thing. I think I am still trying to process the scope of it all. Sometimes it hits me and I go "holy crap, my mom has cancer." But at least I know that she'll be around for a long time to come. Zay said yesterday "good, because she has to be here for the wedding/" Last time I checked there was no ring on a particular finger of mine, so I'm not sure to whose wedding he is referring, lol.