HomeBrew Poker

This post has very little poker content.  It's almost entirely for putting in writing some things I've been dealing with lately.  My only poker content from my last post in November is that I have just been swinging up and down 20k for several months and I'm ready to go back to winning lots of money.  

Now for the down part of the story, my Mom's cancer is back.  I'm not an extremely extroverted person, so just putting that down on paper took a lot of willpower.  As I've stated before, I don't really expect anyone to really care (as this blog is almost entirely for selfish reasons), but it still feels weird making something so personal very public.  During the first round of cancer, I acted very disinterested and generally wasn't exceptionally outwardly concerned.  Looking back, I think this was just some sort of denial-like response to the whole situation.  I love my mother deeply and truly believe she is one of the most amazing and special people on the planet, but my response to the whole situation was just sort of tepid.  I was also a bit younger, still in school and had not faced the mortality of someone close to me for many years. Shortly after my mom was recovering from a masectomy and reconstructive surgery, my Uncle, my dad's twin, passed away from Leukemia.

That really hit me pretty hard, watching my dad deal with everything from his twin brother's death.  Outwardly he was strong, resilient and level-headed.  On the inside, I was among a handful of people that knew my uncle's death rocked my dad.  This was a man who my sister and I only knew as "Uncle Daddy."  The story goes that the first time my sister could talk and met my uncle, she came to the door and was confused because the man in the doorway looked so much like her father.  So the poor little three year old girl just stood there saying, "Uncle?  Daddy?  Uncle? Daddy?"  And the name sort of stuck.  The point of digressing is to say that seeing my father deal with death and having to deal with it myself has fundamentally changed my emotional reaction to close friends and family dying.

So when my I was talking to my sister sometime before Christmas and she said, "Have you heard about the bump on Mom's head," I literally burst into tears.  I knew cancer was bad, but I really knew that when cancer comes back it's about the worst news possible.  My mom had felt the bump for sometime, but only recently went to see her doctor about it (something that selfishly angers me now).  Her doctor literally asked if she was sitting down before giving my mom the news and telling her to see her oncologist immediately. 

The bump on her head was the metastasized breast cancer that had moved to the bone, stage IV as it's known.  Essentially, the doctors hadn't caught the breast cancer early enough and it had moved from her breast to her lymph nodes (some of which were removed during the masectomy), but the cancer was able to spread before it got cut out.  Even a singly cell could theoretically cause a remission.  So now she has breast cancer that has moved to her head and pelvis.

As of today, the the cancer responded "well" to the radiation and she is treatment free for the next three months when she will get a checkup from her oncologist.

I have to say that throughout everything my mom has been an amazingly strong person.  I have literally never heard her complain about being sick once, literally not once.  She has been through multiple rounds of radiation, chemotherapy, and having her breast cut off and a new one sewn back on.  When I was home shortly after her surgery, her stitched wound had to be drained 4 times a day and you know what she would say, "It's not so bad, as least I don't have to go into work," with a big smile on her face.  I can't really say it enough, but she is so incredibly inspiring.  I can't imagine how anyone could make their way through such trials with such a positive resolve for life. 

Her outlook is frankly, grim.  From my own research, there is a good chance she will not be here in 2 years and a great chance she won't be here in 5 years.  I only wish at this point I could spend more time with her.  I should caution that it's not as if cancer is some ultimate death sentence, but I'm a very realistic person and like to prepare for the future, and the reality is she doesn't have a good chance of living a long life with Stage IV breast cancer.  We can only hope that she remains strong to fight the cancer for as long as possible.

In order to end this entry on an upbeat note, Celeste and I have been talking for some time about starting a family and with the recent developments to my mom, it has given us motivation to make the plunge, so I am officially attempting to impregnate my wife.  There is nothing I want more in this world that to have my mom meet my child.  Please don't forget to tell your own mom you love her.