My Best friend .... My Mother .... My ROCK!

I saw a segment on the TV today about women who are diagnosed with breast cancer and it immediately took me back a few years ago when I was in my early twenties and finding out that my Mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and how that made me feel at the time, and actually how amazingly fresh it still is in my thoughts.  They are sad thoughts, not so much now, but I still remember that phone call.  I was living here in Los Angeles by then with my dad when I received the call.   I was really nervous and scared for my Mother.  Of course my head went straight to her not making it through this, not that I didn't want her to, but I had the "what if" thought and I started to cry on the phone with my Mother, which isn't hard to do.  I take after her in that we are definitely emotional, passionate people.  I cry on Kodak commercials, that should give you an idea.  Anyway, after I was done crying, my Mother comforted me and told me that she is going to be fine and will make it through this because she is a strong woman and that she was not ready to leave us yet.  She was comforting me, I should have been the one comforting her and telling her that everything will be OK.  I sort of fell apart because, as much as I hate to admit it, but I am a Momma's boy and always have been.  There are times when just the sound of her voice makes everything better for me.  

She was only forty years old when the first bout with the cancer came and she went in and had the surgery and had the lump removed and also some of her limp nodes as well under her armpit area.  She needed to go on radiation and keemo therapy to make sure the cancer had not spread anywhere else in her body.  We were lucky, she was in God's hands and was taken care of and He heard our prayers.  We thought that this would be the end of us seeing our Mother having to go through this ever again, well, we were wrong and it came back about five years later but in the other breast and it came back with a vengeance this time.  The doctor's did the same procedure and she had to go through all the treatment again and because she was older, her body was a little more weak to be able to handle the treatment of both the keemo and radiation at the same time but she made it through once again.  Again, we were taken care of and in God's hands one more time.  By the time she was almost fifty, again the cancer came back but this time to the original breast this all began with and we were very concerned at this point because the doctor told her that she probably would not make through the treatment after surgery this time.  He told her that she had no choice but to have a radical mastectomy.  My Mother was so stubborn and I understand now, and that it would be the same if I were to have my testicles removed that I would feel less of a man and that is how my Mother was faced with the fact that she would wake up out of surgery and have her woman hood taken away from her.  We children and the rest of the family told that she had no choice and that her decision affected all of us and just not her, so she finally gave in and the doctor offered to do a new procedure that had been introduced and that she would not have fake breasts but breasts that were made of her own tissue.  Fat from around her mid section was extracted to rebuild her breasts.  She ended up with a tummy tuck and bigger breasts.  She woke up out of surgery and was so happy.  

My Mother has so much strength in her and for what she has gone through in her life, from raising three kids to having husbands that abused her both mentally and physically and for her to still be an amazing woman, Mother and my best friend is truly what I can say is the definition of a Mother!  As I right this I am a little emotional, full of happiness and so proud to be able to have been born to her and how God has granted my two sisters and I the most incredible Mother anyone could ask for.  I love her with all my heart and soul and now that I am in Los Angeles and she is up in Washington State, I don't see her very much and she is now sixty years old and I know there will come the time for me to say good bye to her, but until then I want to cherish EVERY moment and breath that I have and she breaths because she "Is my ROCK!", and I am her number ONE fan!

I love you Mom ... 

Mom and my sisters and I at Xmas time

      

Just being gorgeous

I used to love to watch her get ready, so pretty

     

My beautiful Mother at her wedding to current soul mate