Long Overdue Update

I feel like I should start this blog by saying Happy New Year. Since it's now February 24th and my first blog of the year.

To say it's been a good start to the year, is really an understatement. Yes the first week was fabulous! I couldn't have asked for a better start then spending it in Las Vegas with the hubs. The thrill and excitment of ringing in the new year on the Vegas Strip was the best experience ever!! I would do it again in a heartbeat.

But that happiness was short lived when we got a phone call from my sister at 4:30 in the morning telling us that my mom called her because she was feeling horrible. She could hardly breathe and her heart was racing and said that she wasn't sure if she could make it to answer the door for EMS.

She did get the door opened and after a few hours of testing, she was severely anemic and bleeding internally. Which caused her to be admitted to find the source. On January 12th we got news that nobody ever wants to here. She had a mass on her stomach that is bleeding and the source of the internal bleeding. They also suspect cancer. It also had to be removed even if it wasn't. She underwent surgery on the 14th. The removed 2/3's of her tummy. Thankfully, no other organs showed signs of cancer. However, a few days later it was confirmed that it was cancer and in one lymph node.

Oddly, she took the news better then I did. And my siblings. But at 86, I guess she's allowed to be 'okay' with it.

So after a few weeks in the hospital, 2 weeks in rehab and 2 weeks at my sister's, she is back at her own house and doing extremely well for a woman her age that just had more then half of her tummy removed.

Hopefully she will continue to get stronger each day as she will need all the strength she can muster since she has decided that she doesn't want any treatment. She says she's too old and how much time does she have anyway.

I'm finally ok with her decision. The hardest part at first was that I was always in denial that she was going to die someday. And she couldn't die because that would make me an orphan...silly I know. But I'm at terms with it and who am I to go against the wishes of an 86 year old woman. I think she's earned the right to say and do whatever she wants.