So where we had sort of left off was Mom had gone from not wanting any drastic measures, to deciding on having the debulking surgery.

The day of surgery was full of fear, hopefulness and family.. but what I haven’t quiet gotten to yet was that mom was very private. With that, we didn’t publicly broadcast what was going on, mom didn’t want the attention, the sympathy. Those that needed to know did, and I did my best to keep everyone informed. But there is always something that falls through the cracks.

We had all gathered at the hospital. My father, myself, my aunt and uncles..im sure there were more but I cant seem to put that all together in this moment. We had family and family friends drop off food for us as they knew it was going to be a very long day of waiting. Mom was wheeled off and we gathered just outside the waiting room. My anxiety was through the roof already and I jumped on Facebook to see a post that was announcing my mother was having brain surgery that day and asking for prayers. Now this person was no where near the hospital and didn’t know exactly what was going on themselves, as well as putting information out that wasn’t common knowledge flooded my phone and my fathers phone with a million questions in a moment that we just wanted to be quiet and present for. I got the post removed but the damage had been done and I spent the majority of the day fielding calls and texts, I felt like a broken record, trying to give out the correct information without giving out too much that would send everyone into a panic. I took that on, my dad didn’t need to do anything other than be there for the moment mom needed him.

I took to Facebook again and created a family only group to keep things more centralized for getting information out, it worked quite well and lessened the amount of repeat conversations.

Moms surgery was about 5 hours long. We waited and visited with family. I’ll never forget it, we took up the whole common area outside the waiting room that day. Family and friends had bought us snacks and coffee so we didn’t even have to think about anything other than mom. we all sat there together until the doctor came and told us surgery had gone well. They were able to remove the majority of the tumor in her Cerebellum but were not able to touch any others due to them being attached to the brain stem. Next stop was ICU to recover.

Surprising to all of us, mom came out of that surgery great, she was smiling and alert and quite loopy. That night we left mom, gave hugs and kisses and headed to the house. The plan was to have a fire and decompress from the day. I wrote in our family page the following..

“We don’t know what tomorrow may bring, but we know that today is a good day and we will take it”

What seemed like forever then, looks like a blink of an eye now.. August 27th 2018 to September 2nd 2018… She was able to bust out of there and get home to us and her beloved pets…

Now September 2nd 2018 to March 17th 2019… so much in my world..in my families world would change in 6 short short months…

I don’t think I’m ready tonight to start on that chapter. There’s a lot of happiness, sadness, grief.. and celebration to unpack and its emotionally draining to be honest.

Well start that on the next one…