The Long and Winding and Very Hilly Road

I really have the best intentions on keeping up with this blog. I know I haven’t done a great job. Really, I haven’t done a great job at anything lately. I haven’t been a good wife. I haven’t been a good mom. I haven’t been a good homeschool teacher. I have not been good at any of my roles lately. I have been thinking about what to do with my mom and about my mom and her health and what seems to be the lack of concern on her part. I have been consumed with these thoughts day and night for nearly a year now.

When we started down this road a year ago, I didn't expect it to be so winding and hilly.  I expected a straight path from problem to solution.  (My engineering brain at work again.) Life this last year has proven to be like our drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway last fall; up and down, left and right, and sometimes you go down so quickly, that it makes you a bit sick to your stomach. 



In talking with my uncle a couple of weeks ago, he suggested for me not to be obsessive about my mom and all of her needs to the detriment of my family. That was just what I needed to hear. It is time for me to shift responsibility back to where it belongs. It is her responsibility to fight the cancer. It is her responsibility to keep hydrated. It is her responsibility to take her medicines on time. It is her responsibility to eat 3 meals a day. It is her responsibility to quit smoking. I can’t make her want get better and live. It reminds me of the old saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” That is where we are with her now. We have lead her to the place where she can receive care from those who love her, but we can’t make her WANT to get well.

I will continue to be responsible for her finances. That is something I can do without harming my family. I will continue to pray for her healing and for her desire to live. I can love her, even when it is hard.

For the last 2 weeks, I have made the trip from home to Louisiana twice to help deal with the doctors’ appointments and the plan for the future. We have been so consumed by the recurring UTI, that we didn’t even consider the possibility that something else might be wrong. This last Monday, we went for a follow-up appointment with her urologist and found out about the mass in one of her kidneys. This was the first we had heard of this. He began to scramble to get a CT or PET scan done, indicating that he wanted to do surgery this week.

As I type this, we are waiting to get approval from her insurance for a PET scan to further investigate an abnormality in her kidney. She was supposed to have a CT scan this morning, but she has not been keeping herself hydrated, so her kidneys are not functioning properly, so she can’t have the contrast. My sister and I were both there with her last week and even with both of us watching, we couldn’t keep her hydration at a level where her kidneys function properly. It is out of our hands.

Please pray for my sister, my brothers and me to have wisdom as we make decisions about the future of my mom’s care.

For now, we rest in the knowledge that this is only temporary and that someday we will see the light at the end of the tunnel.