My mom lost her battle last week.
We got her diagnosis on Valentine's Day - stage 4 liver cancer. They were never able to definitively confirm the origin, but they treated it as if it were squamous cell from the bile duct. Very aggressive and hard to treat. Treatment plan was just palliative care to "maintain" her.
I spent a week with her in March, and she was so sick then. So thin, unable to eat.
I got there last Sunday, to spend another week with her, the 3rd to the 10th, so I could spend some time with her on Mother's Day and help get her to her fluid and chemo appointments. She'd just had a scan the week before to see how her tumors had been responding to treatment, and had learned that they were stable - not growing but not shrinking. She was depressed at first, but the nurses at the oncologist's office made her feel better about it and she was determined to make the most of everything.
On Monday the 4th, she had a cardiac arrest as we were leaving the oncologist's office. She went face down in the parking lot. It took 12 minutes to resuscitate her, and I wish they hadn't done it. She wouldn't have wanted that.
She spent the rest of the week on life support in the ICU, until they were able to do an MRI to determine what we all had already guessed - irreparable brain damage from being without oxygen for so long. Her body was just so thin and so weak from the disease and all the treatments she'd been enduring.
We took her off of life support on Friday, the 8th, after learning the MRI results.
I feel broken. I can't believe how quickly all of this happened. I can't believe the whole week we were supposed to have together was stolen from us. I can't believe I'll never have another Mother's Day with her. It's just so unfair. I keep seeing her fall over and over in my head. It was so traumatic. And I guess I technically saw her die twice - once in that parking lot, and again in the hospital room when the support was removed. I haven't verbalized that to anyone but my husband yet.
The Sunday night I got there, she and my stepdad didn't have couches because they were waiting for new ones that she picked out to be delivered Tuesday. The new ones were going to have power-recline, because she wasn't strong enough to get in and out of the regular recliners they had. She never got to use them at the house, but they look great, she had such lovely taste.
That Sunday night we hung out in her bed together we watched Rooster and she giggled a little bit. I kissed her forehead before I went to bed and told her I loved her. I hope she knew how loved she was, and how lucky I was to have her as my mom.