Eston farm girls are hardy stock. Up with a walker, sitting in the patient lounge, blowing into her spirometer like there is a prize if the ball hits the top. Let me tell ya – epidural morphine is God’s gift to the post op patient.  I told her I was pretty disappointed that they gave her an epidural as it robbed me of my Shirley McLain moment from Terms of Endearment; I so wanted to run down the hall and bang my fists on the nursing station screaming ” Give my mother her morphine!”

She was not amused.

She spent the day observing the antics of a challenging patient who apparently brought in her own narcotics and was really really angry that nursing would not let her take them. Screaming obscenities at staff, security called in. ” Better than a soap opera” said my mom.

She woke up from the anesthetic with a tremendous appetite.  I brought up two donuts from Tim’s   “in case you get hungry tonight”. She literally ripped the bag out of my hand and stuffed a donut in her mouth. Well all righty then.

She has her glasses, her teeth, and her beloved crossword book so our services are no longer required. ” No point in sitting here staring at me” she said. Yes ma’am I replied and exited stage right 🙂

She is a little pissed that she has lung cancer. And a little surprised as she was feeling perfectly healthy up till now. “Are you sure I have lung cancer?” she asked the surgeon when he made rounds. “It’s not like I feel the urge to run across Canada”. Ah yes, as I have learned with my own boys, sarcasm is a hereditary trait.

For the second time in my life a physician began a conversation with the words “I’m sorry but I have bad news for you”. And just like when Dr. Sankaaran came to tell me about Lucas 19 years ago, the world went silent and still.

My mom’s biggest fear has been that she would not wake up from surgery and I glanced at the clock, saw it had only been an hour (versus the predicted 3 hours) and had a few heart stopping seconds where I thought her nightmare had come true. By the time my head caught up with the conversation I had to ask the surgeon to start all over.

It turns out the lung cancer was more invasive than the scans revealed. The tumour is well into the chest wall but more significantly, it has wrapped itself around the superior vena cava (one of the large blood vessels going into the heart). Not a place you want to be slicing through with a scalpel. So they beat a fast retreat.

 And now we are onto Plan B – referral to Cancer Center for possible radiation and/or chemo. Or worse – to be told those aren’t even options. She still has a chest tube and epidural so will be in Obs unit tonight and in hospital for a few days. Can’t start any other treatment till she has recovered from the surgery so we are focused on that.

 Everyone is pretty upset – it was a bit of a surprise to say the least. But Dr. B was great. He showed us the CT Scan and carefully walked us through everything and explained why they could not tell on the CT or PET that this was going to be the situation. I still say the decision to do surgery was the right one based on what we knew – but mom and dad are distressed that they can’t move onto treatment now till she has recovered from the surgery. Dr. B was so compassionate; he took his time walking us through the images and the surgery and he shook my Dad’s hand and apologised for having to deliver such bad news.

My parents have been together for almost 55 years. They don’t have a lot of close friends, don’t hang out with their siblings; their world is truly just the two of them. Dealing with surgeons and PET scans is easy. The hardest part of all of this is watching the two of them holding hands, trying to be so brave for each other.