Mom's Diagnosis- When Life Throws You a Lemon

L-R: Joe, Mom, Me, Harmony, Anthony

Life has this funny way about it. I have spent years trying to change the way my mind thinks when it comes to negativity. I have spent countless hours worrying about the things I cannot change. I have wasted good energy on people who could have cared less about the things you have done for them.

First image of her brain metastases after her stroke.

My mother was diagnosed in December of 2018 with Stage 3 Triple negative breast cancer with metastasis to the brain. It was only two weeks after her diagnosis she then had a stroke. They did a scan of her full chest to see how far the cancer had spread and where else.

Turns out, the breast cancer hadn't spread but there was another mass found on her right lung. They quickly biopsied that mass to confirm that what they were seeing was not the breast cancer that had spread, but in addition it was also lung cancer.

By the new year, my mother had been through 2 strokes and diagnosed with stage 3 triple negative breast cancer and stage 4 lung cancer with metastases to the brain.




This was the start of one of the hardest moments of my life, but what I can only imagine to be the worst moment of my mothers.

We sat in doctors appointments day in and day out. I traveled down from New Hampshire to Boston to be there for almost every appointment and to hold her hand through it all.

In the short my mother had 10 doctors she had to see on a regular basis. That included her Medical Oncologist, Surgeons, Lung Specialist, Neurologist, Radiology Oncologist, Chemo nurses, Lab nurses, and a social worker.

These doctors became family to her and myself. There were always hugs after every appointment, she was never once rushed out of the room because her time was up. Although, my mother was in the end trying to run them over with her wheel chair or hit them with a her walker to run out the door screaming most days. I never blamed her. Not once.

HELL, I even wanted to run screaming half the time. She was scared, but incredibly strong. I have never witnessed such strength in my entire life, more than I did during this process.

I spent years as a child looking up to my mom, watching her suffer in her relationships with the men she chose to marry and be with. She was a boat sailing through rough seas her entire life. Always somehow coming out of every storm as if she rode it out with no doubt she would survive.

She was by definition a warrior. There was no doubt in my mind she was going to get through this storm.

Ready to go home after having pneumonia and an infection in her lung.

What seemed like a life time of waiting on result, after result started to happen fast. The first test was to see if my mothers breast cancer was genetic. Triple Negative is one of the genetic forms and is one of the hardest to treat.

I will never forget the moment my mother told me "I am not scared because I have cancer, I am scared to give this to my children and grandchildren." Results came back, she did not have the genetic marker! We celebrated. I made sure to celebrate every small achievement in a very big game of chance.

The day she was given less than 6 months.

The chemo treatments felt like a lifetime to get started do to the complexity of my mothers diagnosis. Typically Lung cancer is the more aggressive of the two types of cancer, so the doctors truly believed it was her lung cancer that had spread to her brain and not the breast cancer. They began treating her with a chemo drug used to treat lung cancer with the hopes it would also treat the breast cancer.

I will  never forget the day she was given less than 6 months to live. He oncologist didn't shy away from the facts. She didn't beat around the bush. She just said exactly what it was. The chemo treatments weren't working, the brain mets were still growing and spreading. Her tumor in her breast started as 2 fingers width across and had grown to 5 full fingers in width in just 4 months. Nearly tripling in size.

She discussed the options of how to make the best of what little time she had on this earth. She discussed hospice, traveling, and made sure to tell my mother how important it was to "get her ducks in a row" as she said.

She discussed the quality of life, and how they could keep treating her but only under the agreement that it was to slow the growth of her tumor but knowing it was not to cure her.

Then she pulled out a piece of paper. Carefully went over it with us and explained that it was a DNR form. This would be the last piece of paper my mother ever wrote her signature on. The last piece of paper I would ever receive from her doctors to keep record of. But most importantly the one piece of paper that must be kept near her at all times, and to be given to any medical provider should anything happen to her from then on.

The doctor described to my mother what it would look like should she not sign this piece of paper. Very clearly. Handed it to my mom, and as tears rolled down her eyes, they covered my face also knowing exactly what this meant.

It meant, my mom was actively dying and there was nothing, nothing that could save her. This was a moment of reality that I dreaded my entire life. The moment I realized, I soon would not have my best friend by my side. She never stopped smiling or laughing though.

Just a week before she passed.

From the time she was given less than 6 months right up until the day she passed, was the beginning of a whole new world and trauma I knew I had to face head on.