Back from the brink

I got to spend most of the past weekend with my mother. Sunday was Mother's Day, after all.

Two months ago I didn't expect I'd get that opportunity.

Friends and devoted readers (Which is basically two names for the same category) know my mother has incurable cancer. There's no going back for her, it's just a waiting game for us all. At the beginning of this year, I thought the waiting was over.

Mom's latest chemotherapy treatments wrecked havoc on her body. She couldn't keep any food down so she was losing weight at an astonishing rate. Fluid starting building up in her body, giving her a bloated look. Her strength rapidly deteriorated; her muscles couldn't support her. She was practically bed ridden, yet couldn't climb the stairs up to her room anymore - she moved into the downstairs guest room.

Mom spent roughly half of January and February in a hospital. Sometimes it would be just a night or two, other stays were for a week or more. She was in and out more times than I can recall - the trips became so frequent she and my stepfather would forget to tell me.

Doctors struggled to figure out the problem and put a stop to the fluid build-up. And all the while I planned for the worst. I awoke every morning expecting the phone call that she finally passed on.

But the call never came. The doctors isolated the fluid problem and now have it relatively under control. Mom is off the chemotherapy, and her appetite is slowly returning. She's undergoing physical therapy to regain her strength and has successfully gone from using a walker to a cane to move around. What's more, the doctors say her tumors, while still active, show no signs of growing.

Her doctors' best estimates are she should carry on for another two years. That might not sound like a lot of time to you, but it seems like an eternity compared to the amount of time I thought my family had left with her three months ago.

(The doctor's first estimated she'd be dead within five years when she was initially diagnosed, but timetable already passed. Then they thought, like everyone else, that she was on her deathbed at the start of this year. So they could easily be overestimating or underestimating again. I guess that last bit really isn't totally reassuring, is it?)

"I came back from the brink," was how Mom described it.

Yes, she did. But technically she's still clinging just out of reach of the jaws of death.

She's still very weak and frail, unable to climb the stairs on her own and always in need of sitting or laying down. Recovery is far away, and a full recovery is obviously impossible as long as the cancer remains in her system.

During this weekend, however, all I could think about was how good it was to see my mom again. Even as she nagged me about asking someone in town about a job, all I could feel was a sense of gladness that she was still here to nag (Plus, she actually apologized afterward. My mom apologized for something! That's a big deal!).

I live my life one day at a time. The future, for better or worse, is coming regardless what I do. I can prepare for it, I can even change it in small ways, but one way or another it is coming. If I spent every day mourning over my mother's impending doom, or my futile search for a career, or whether climate change will destroy humanity - I'd be in a state of perpetual depression and fear.

I don't do that. I live for today.

I recycle that plastic bottle, I keep sending out those resumes, and I enjoy still having my mother here. I can solve the problems directly in front of me, tackling bigger problems one day at a time. That's all I have any control over. That's how I can impact the future.

Obviously some problems are beyond my power to fix, but I can still focus on what I have now as opposed to what I may lose tomorrow.

For the present, I am glad. I choose to be glad because I know somewhere down the line, perhaps in two years or perhaps a little longer or shorter than that, my happiness will sour. But for now I'm enjoying what I have.

(The Wish - conveniently translated for all my Spanish-speaking readers for some reason)