So you already know the punchline...

but back to mom. After 20 years literally cancer free that ugly scourge struck again but not as suspected. About last April mom said she had less appetite, she thought she had a virus or food poisoning and let it go. She never really felt better and of course she only shared the mildest of symptoms. I was involved in my own life hundreds of miles away and hadn’t seen her for a while. By summer she realized that it wasn’t just a stomachache and starting going to different doctors eventually landing back at her original oncologist who treated her for breast cancer 20 years before. The diagnosis was rare - perinatal nodes. She told me they were like strands of pearls looped in the space between her skin and her stomach and female organs. The pearls caused ascite fluid which distended her abdomen. I went to Florida that weekend sharing her 82nd birthday with her obviously concerned it might be her last, but looking for solutions to keep my mother with me longer. We went to her oncologist and I listened as he attentively told her the details of her cancer and treatment. Chemo of course a cocktail similar to those given to patients with ovarian cancer. Her C125 number was 1500 the marker by which all success or failure would be measured. The doctor said that he had other patients with this type of cancer. They all lived many years after treatment eventually dying of something else (well that is the irony of course, you survive to die...) at least it provided me with hope that mom would be with us longer. My brother spent the initial chemo treatments with mom and undoubtedly went through the worst of it with her. We formulated a plan to help my mom get the care and medicine she needed although we were thousands of miles away - she revolted on the level of care we wanted and on her relapse stay in the hospital we put our foot down and insisted on full care for the next few months. It wasn’t easy for any of us to see her struggle or go through any of this pain and torture. But that’s the disease. It doesn’t discriminate. She struggles/d with the fact that unlike her breast cancer she couldn’t cut it out and I told her just to keep beating that alien with the chemo stick. Five treatments and five months later her C125 number is 21. Dramatic life altering but not life ending. The mission goes on and her treatments aren’t over. That’s why my mom and I are having chemo at the same time.